Jerry Gaulding
Free Press editor

Now that the excitement of having had a presidential primary that Means Something has died down a bit, maybe we can safely observe that this has been a really strange presidential election cycle.

Think about it. Liberals have been dreaming for years and years of the day when the country would be ready for a black president or a woman president. How many of those liberals, do you suppose, ever dreamed that the country would prove itself ready for either or both in the same year?

No, neither one has been elected yet, but the acceptance level for both Obama and Clinton is high enough that the two of them have driven a host of white guys (six, if I'm remembering correctly) out of the Democratic race. One party, at least, this year turned open-minded all of a sudden.

On the Republican side, the leading contenders, other than McCain, all struck me as slightly surreal in the GOP context. Rudy Giuliani, pro-choice, progay rights, serial adulterer, led the polls for most of 2007. Mitt Romney, who was a social liberal when he won election as governor of Massachusetts then turned rock-ribbed conservative to run for president. Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter, two congressmen who are on the far right of a right-wing party. Fred Thompson, an actor and one-term pretty moderate senator who tried to re-invent himself as the second coming of Ronald Reagan, but who tried to do it by sleeping late and not going anywhere. Mike Huckabee, whose main claim to fame until the Iowa caucuses was having lost 120 pounds (but who carried Angelina County in last week's primary), who beat the family-values drum while touting a tax "reform" that would wreak havoc on middle-class families while giving the rich just a little thicker layer of gravy to swim in … none of it seemed to add up. And don't forget Ron Paul ... no, on second thought, let's do forget Ron Paul.

John McCain has been a senator since1987 so he has establishment cred, but die hard Republicans can't stand him because of his carefully cultivated maverick image. He favors a compassionate immigration policy, campaign finance reform and voted against Bush's first round of tax cuts because they were so heavily tilted toward the rich. Apparently that places him halfway toward being a commie, even though he is staunchly pro-life and anti-gay rights and is hawkish on the Iraq war.

I know, the "staunchly pro-life" tag needs an asterisk because McCain is off the reservation again by favoring medical research using embryonic stem cells, but even Nancy Reagan is on his side on this one.

Sane people might wonder why anyone in his or her right mind would even want to be elected president this year. (The answer is ego plus lust for power.) The next president will face an economy teetering on the brink of recession, crippling budget deficits and the prosecution of an unpopular war, which so far has been conducted with borrowed money to the tune of $720 million a day, by some counts. The current "economic stimulus" package, a few hundred dollars for every taxpayer, is just more deficit spending. A lot of the IOUs for that borrowing, aka government bonds, are held by the Chinese. Don't know about anyone else, but that makes me nervous.

None of the three remaining candidates are saying much about how close the U.S. government is to insolvency. McCain wants to make things worse by extending President Bush's third round of tax cuts, now set to expire in 2010. The two Democrats are busy promising new domestic programs, with little footnotes about how these will be paid for, but as a rule, their numbers don't add up. "Balanced budget" is a phrase not being uttered during the current campaign.

But the long-term health of the economy should be the number-one issue of 2008. That it is not a good sign for the future - no matter who wins in November.