I was thinking about the coming four years, and I have to say, neither outcome is going to be optimal. Then again, I don't think either outcome if going to be as bad as the worst of the nay sayers predict. Yes, the worst case will hurt, and hurt quite a bit, but I still doubt it will be quite as bad as predicted. And the alternative, despite many conservative critics, will be nowhere near as bad as some are predicting.

Let us start with the best case, a McCain victory.

Likely, if McCain wins, the Democrat sweep of congress won't happen either. As the Murtha case is proving, McCain gains and congressional losses reinforce one another. When voters turn out for McCain, they vote against the Democrats. Likewise, when voters turn out against the Democrats in congress, they boost McCain's numbers. So a McCain victory probably means the Democrats didn't get their filibuster-proof majority, and certainly didn't get the super majority they need to be able to ignore vetoes. So, if we have a president McCain, we are looking at a divided government.

That will serve to push McCain right. As he is learning, all those who worked with hi in congress are not going to work with him as president. Even if he bends over backwards to appeal to the left, trying to push through left-wing measures, he will find they oppose him. As Bush learned with prescription coverage, the left won't vote with a Republican president, even when they agree with him. So, left with only Republicans for support, McCain will likely have to move to the right if he hopes to accomplish anything. And if he doesn't, then we have four years of nothing being done. Either one appeals to me, so no worries there.

But what of specific topics? Well, on defense, we already know where McCain stands, and, unless you are a die hard isolationist, he is pretty appealing there. Likewise on supreme court nominations and taxes, he has shown that he supports pretty solidly Republican positions. Some fear he will appoint left-leaning justices, but given the hostility of Democrats, I think the likelihood of that is small.

He has expressed foolish ideas on immigration, but the congress has much more say there, and, as the congress learned last time, trying to push amnesty is a losing proposition. Some may push it in hopes of using the immigrant votes to insulate themselves from angry voters. But no every district has enough immigrants to do that, so I doubt amnesty will be pushed through, even with a strongly Democrat congress.

And on the economy? McCain, whatever he once thought, seems to be coming around. He has been pushing new drilling while downplaying his cap and trade silliness. Once in office, I think the trend will continue. Faced with hostile Democrats and only Republicans in congress to assist him, I am sure he will continue his rightward drift. And the same for the economy in general. Admittedly, he bought into this bailout garbage, but so did almost everyone in congress. Sadly, we live in Keynesian, or neo-Keynesian times, no one is willing to let the economy sort itself out, they always turn to the government. So, it was inevitable. That McCain backed an idiocy supported by nearly everyone else says little about him. And barring the bailout, his rhetoric has been generally good. He has had periodic populist foolishness, but it has been declining as the race goes on. I think by the time he is sworn in, he will be much farther right than he is now.

In general, I expect a McCain presidency to be somewhat similar to a Bush presidency with a few significant differences. First, I would expect a more aggressive military stand, as McCain has generally taken a more firm position than Bush has and, ironically given his fondness for the media, has shown less tendency to fold to the media on defense matters. I also would expect him to be a bit less prone to "bipartisan" stupidities like No Child Left Behind, despite McCain's fondness for "reaching across the aisle", simply because I expect, following an Obama defeat, that the left will be in no mood to cooperate.

Now let us turn to the other possibility, an Obama victory.

I think the most notable outcome will be nothing political. Instead, the most noteworthy outcome of an Obama presidency will be the death of the mainstream media. They may have been able to get away with a strongly pro-Obama bias during the race, but once he is president that fawning will turn off even Obama supporters. No one wants a press which idolizes their "dear leader", and I don't see the press turning on Obama after placing him in office. So I would expect, over the four years of an Obama presidency, we would see the rise of more and more alternative media, and their eventually replacing the mainstream. Eventually, the MSM will themselves become the fringe, as their obsequious adoration causes them to lose credibility.

So, what about the politics?

Well, the worst result, by far, will be the supreme court nominees. There is no doubting that Obama will nominate solidly left court justices. And, thanks to Boumedine, the Court has pretty much declared that they do not care if congress declares matters beyond court review, they will review them any way. On the positive side, this may eventually lead to a showdown of sorts. Following the Obama presidency, I can see the congress trying to exclude some matter from judicial review, the court refusing to comply, and it eventually coming down to whether the executive obeys the courts or congress. It may be a backddoor way to finally curb judicial activism, but it will definitely be an uncomfortable situation for some time.

Ignoring the courts, I think Obama's greatest harm will be in foreign affairs. In some ways it will resemble the Clinton presidency, but in others be much more harmful. I can see Obama following Clinton's lead in using the military for social experimentation, and also rabidly downsizing, but I don't see him using the military as Clinton did in Haiti or the Balkans. I think Obama may hold out for a while in the middle east, simply to prove he was not a complete cut and run candidate, but I think his expressed pacifism is real, and I foreseen him trying to avoid using the military whenever possible. In regards to his foreign policy, I foresee more Carter than Clinton.

And in our current situation, that bodes ill for our future. A number of countries have expansionist goals, and several others have hostile intentions toward us. I can't see Obama using the military to deter any of these, which means that whoever is our next president will probably be faced will an aggressively expanding Russia, a Chinese occupied Taiwan, an abandoned Israel, a nuclear Iran, and a North Korea which si actively supplying other nations with weapons both conventional and nuclear. Nor do I doubt that Chavez will begin trying to export his revolution throughout South America and the Caribbean should Obama prove as passive as I expect.

Outside of foreign affairs, I think Obama will try to do much of what people expect, but I think congressional pressures will hold him back somewhat. Doubtless he will want to create universal health care, institute a more progressive tax scheme, and generally try to "spread the wealth around". But I think here he will run into the problem I mentioned earlier, congressmen face reelection every two years, and they are well aware that America is not excited about full blown socialism. Yet Obama needs them for most of his plans.

So, Obama will be stuck with half-socialist measures which he can sell as "fixing the market", as most leftists have been for the past few decades. Granted, eh can do a lot of harm this way, he can inflated, he can destroy our energy security, he can impeded the growth of business and he can prevent the accumulation of capital, but he is not going to institute full scale socialism. He will hurt the economy, quite badly, and many of his worst ideas will probably be with us for decades, just as the worst of Carter have been, but ti won't be the complete disaster some predict. Very painful and with lasting damage, but not total destruction.

Finally, on the social front, Obama will probably have some impact, but it is hard to tell how. As I said above, his love affair with the media will probably spur the growth of alternative media. Likely, he or some other Democrats will try to counter this with a revived fairness doctrine, but I am not sure if it will work or not. Even if Obama has had time to appoint justices and manages to survive a court challenge, applying the fairness doctrine to the internet or satellite radio will be a challenge, to say the least. The same with cable broadcast, or satellite television. If they press it, most likely it would simply spell the death of broadcast media and the total dominance of satellite, internet and , perhaps, cable media. Broadcast medai would survive, but with all the popularity and energy of NPR or PBS.

Beyond that, our culture is largely immune to the president. He can have some small influence, but by and large, the society is shaped by other forces. The only possible impact Obama would have is that it would be much harder to push the "everyone is racist" line ever again. Once we have elected black president, the claim that a black man can't succeed in America becomes harder to push. Then again, there is one possible response. Race activists may suddenly discover that, with an African father and being raised in Indonesia, Obama isn't "really black". They may claim he did not experience American racism and the legacy of slavery, so he didn't suffer the discrimination other blacks do. It is an absurd argument, but faced with losing their lucrative race baiting jobs, I bet "diversity consultants" and Jackson-type shakedown artists are going to discover his lack of blackness very quickly should he win.

So, in summary, things are not quite as bad a some say. Obama will be painful, a small disaster, but not the massive disaster some claim. It will hurt, and the damage will last for a long time, but it won't be the inauguration of soviet government in America.

On the other hand, McCain is starting to look a little better than he did. There are still problems, and some of his earlier statements are troubling, but his more recent statements have been improving (in general). He supported the foolish bailout, but it was the rare politician who did not support some form of bailout, so it is hard to find a viable candidate who was also opposed to this foolishness. McCain is far from my first choice, but is much less of a catastrophe than some believe.

And, even if you don't agree with me on either candidate, there is one other factor that makes both of them much more appealing. Neither one is likely to win a second term. That should make them both a bit less frightening.