Well, here we are.  November 4th, 2008 and while in reality voting has been going on for weeks now all across America this is the de facto "big day".  I am both relieved and a bit saddened at the same time.  Relieved because this seemed to be the longest campaign season in my life time, and saddened because there seems to be so many questions left unanswered.

I am not convinced that had the campaign season drug on for another imponderable year that voters would have any more answers to the pressing questions that the media has left untouched. However, I am convinced, that as Saul Alinsky points out in his Power Tactics,  the militant interest in electing Obama would have faded.  You can only be enamored with "The New" for so long before it becomes passe.

I am most troubled with how the sales job has replaced the reasoned public debate.  The real debate about governing philosophy, constitutional integrity, social engineering, fairness and economics was replaced with a sound bite war of nebulous concepts and meaningless abstracts, of mean-spirited name calling and baseless accusations that kept the heart of the matters obscured in favore of gossip column bickering.  Barack Obama consistently called all questions of his experience, associations, philosophical positions and beliefs a distraction rather than explain them and in turn give us a better understanding of the man that is Barack Obama.  The Media were his willing accomplices in constructing a detour that circumvented the substance.

I have great respect for my colleagues on the left who are knowingly casting a vote for the most left-leaning, socialist candidate that has ever been nominated for the highest office.  I know that reasonable, intelligent people can hold extremely opposite philosophical views. Yet, I harbor great pity for the majority who have been duped into believing that Barack Obama is a pragmatic centrist who will be a unifier. The Intellectual Left knows better and they are rejoicing at the prospect of an Obama presidency.  This is the Left's October Revolution.

The one who ascends to power under such maleficence will most likely govern with the same degree of subterfuge and deceit that brought them to office.  I will expect nothing more from an Obama presidency than a partisan incremental march toward the left under the cover of centristism.  Alarmingly, most people will take no notice.  The Intellectual on the Right will twist and squirm and do their best to make the philosophical arguments, tied to the anchor of historical precedent, while the Intellectual Left will obfuscate and create an apologetic to further justify the historical failure of central planning all while telling those they are putting in bondage that they now are freer than they have ever been before. 

The war that this election is was one of two diametrically opposing philosophies, but the pivotal battle ended up being over meaningless feel-good abstracts wrapped in a dense cloak of mesmerizing rhetoric.  Regardless of the outcome, the verdict on this election has been rendered, it was the least substantive in the public arena and will most likely have one the deepest and longest impact on American society since Lincoln was elected in 1860.