Editor's Note: Last week, we held a teleconference with two friends from home on the subject of the social tone of the 2008 presidential election. While Val and Kevin could agree that both major candidates had a marked interest in courting America's ailing working families, their common ground ended there. What followed was a monumental spiral into juvenility; in the flurry of name-calling we remember hearing the epithets "plutocrat," "demagogue," "pedantic Ivy League cocksucker," "pretty-boy SoCal ass-surfer," and "monster douche" used liberally. No fewer than four birthday invitations were withdrawn. We sensed, however, that our buddies probably had well-reasoned arguments waiting in the wings, and that they had simply been unable to articulate them in the heat of the moment. We suggested that Val and Kevin compose opposing editorials addressing the question of the presidential candidates and Middle America. What follows is the result.

Barack Obama and Kitten America: A Match Made in Heaven

A really rather important essay co-authored by an anonymous aide to Barack Obama's 2004 senatorial campaign and a postdoctoral student at the University of Chicago named Derek Sullivan (or something) offers this profound anecdote from the candidate's childhood in Honolulu:

Young Barry strode along Ala Moana Beach one evening in 1972, pondering the world's injustices (as he was wont to do) and gazing into the rising surf. A storm was rolling in; the sky was growing dark and tall breakers were pounding the sand. Young Barry pondered the striking scene and immediately recognized it as a metaphor for a country still reeling from a decade of tumult and social upheaval...[and] a disastrous war overseas.

The bubbling waters swelled and washed over Young Barry's sandal-clad feet. Knowing that it was nearing dinner-time, he lifted his arms in a moment of silent exaltation, and then began making his way back to the road. But something caught his attention.

Young Barry rushed back to the sand, where a small crate sat precariously, soon to be swept into the waves. As he approached the curious object, he noticed a strange, clamorous noise emanating from the box. Prying open the lid with his surprisingly powerful arms, Young Barry's suspicions were confirmed: the box contained a litter of newborn kittens.

Young Barry removed his shirt and placed it atop the mewing, frightened litter to shield them from the elements. He then carried the crate home in the violent storm...[where upon his arrival] he found that the box had fallen completely silent: the kittens were fast asleep.

Over the coming weeks, Young Barry nursed the litter by hand, raising them as his own. (Only two are known to have died; one succumbed to a necrotizing infection of the eye socket, while another suffocated on the somewhat lengthy walk between Ala Moana Beach and the Dunham residence.) When they had grown strong enough, Young Barry carefully selected a home for each and every one of them. Two of the kittens moved to the Mediterranean, and after a brief stint in Alba Longa, founded the Roman Empire.

This man needs to be President of the United States.

But what, you may ask, does this heroic tale have to do with the Illinois senator's relationship to the average American: to Joe Schmo and Joe the Plumber; to Tom, Dick, and Harry; to their socially inept cousin, John Q. Public?

As someone who has spent much of his free time and quite a few vacations cavorting about with the working and lower-to-mid-middle class, I can say this: it has everything to do with it.

My reasoning? America is on the verge of another storm. The collapse of our decadent capitalist system, the erosion of America's imperial grip abroad, and a fast-approaching climate disaster are all clouds on our country's horizon. While those of us with prestigious degrees may be able to wait it out in our wine cellars, ordinary Americans are poised to suffer gravely hard times. Their jobs will be eliminated; their homes will disappear beneath the floodwaters; moose will be shot. In a few exceedingly rare (though nevertheless tragic) cases, their sons and daughters will die in senseless wars abroad.

They are people like LeAnn, my family's housekeeper, who after three decades of inhaling cleaning chemicals now suffers from emphysema, and has no health insurance to pay for it. Others have stories like Brent, a neighbor of mine who was kicked out of Princeton and now may lose his job at our local health food store (Americans have puzzlingly little interest in quality, organically-grown cuisine these days - I still shop there). These are the faces of Middle America, and they are straining in fear and uncertainty. Who will rescue them?

Ordinary Americans, you see, are like kittens, stranded on a wind-blasted beach, abandoned by a failed administration to perish in a watery hell (likely the result of global warming).We need Barack Obama, now more than ever, to wrap us in a blanket of responsible fiscal regulation, protect us from the pouring rains of petroleum addiction and a climate meltdown, carry us into the warm shelter of a sound, solvent taxation scheme, and nurse us back to health on the sweet milk of accessible, universal healthcare. Barack Obama can, and will, deliver us from catastrophe. He happens to have experience with this sort of thing.

Val Canesmonk attends the University of Southern California, where he studies Computer Engineering. He was a huge dick to everyone in high school.

Salvation in a Veteran's Grilled Cajones

I find the kitten story quoted by Val to be both touching and a bit fishy. Aside from its dubious source, I believe this all-too-perfect tale could easily have a hidden meaning - perhaps it's a code decipherable only by the domestic terrorists to whom B. Hussein Obama has acknowledged ties. Before you dismiss this idea entirely, I would caution you that the writer attends the University of Chicago, making him a likely member of Senator Obama's radical cabal. 

Am I implying that Val, too, is a terrorist? Of course not, because that would be rude.

And so what if this teary-eyed fable is true? What then? It is well known that in the 1930s, the Empire of Japan used smallpox-infected kittens, puppies, and other "cute" animals to decimate entire villages in Southeast Asia. What if our messianic young hero - inadvertently or not - had unleashed a deadly epidemic on the fair state of Hawaii? For this reason, I would not be the first to say that an 11-year old who traipses onto a stormy shoreline to rescue feral kittens lacks both the judgment and maturity required of an American president (not to mention experience).

I will tell you a real story. Once there was a noble air warrior who was shot down over a distant, barbaric country. He was captured and held for five and a half years, and despite having his testicles electrocuted with a car battery, he never surrendered an ounce of usable information to his captors.

This, my friends, is the man who should be our president.

Yes, America is careening fast into a crisis. Average Americans will suffer. We will all have to make sacrifices. Leadership in these trying times, however, will come in the form of straight answers, independent thinking, and balls - balls that have already taken thousands of sizzling volts for our Freedom. This is something that the wine-and-arugula socialists cannot offer the American people. 

Over-educated liberal elitists like Barack Obama are content to sit back and dispense anthropological drivel about the plight of the ordinary small business owner (they call him "tax base"), or the noble military contractor ("mercenary"), or the cue ball-headed plumber ("planted lackey and impostor"), shamelessly denouncing them as "bitter" and ridiculing them for exercising their most sacred rights to a fire-breathing God and fully automatic weaponry. They are quite adept at this - Harvard's tweed jacket brigades prepare them well for it. But where have their balls been all these years? No doubt they have been resting idly against their silken Dolce & Gabbana boxer shorts, basking in unrivaled comfort and security, oblivious to the struggles of their less-privileged peers. These symphony frequenters are so far alienated from Real America that their pitiful attempts to connect with these voters should offend and disgust anyone who has ever taken one in the family jewels for our great nation.

John McCain didn't go to Harvard. The son of a mere soldier, he fought, smashed, and firebombed his way to the American Dream, as both a pilot in Vietnam and as a tax cut-toting foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution. His story could have been anyone's, although his has a happy ending: for his cunning, hard work, and grit, McCain has built himself a modest, $100 million fortune with help from his loving wife and the company she inherited. Americans should celebrate his success; after all, wouldn't his path have been accessible to anyone?

McCain believes in America, and in ordinary Americans. His selection of Sarah Palin as a running mate, an adorable woman from Main Street who attended not one, but four middle-American colleges (compare this to Sen. Obama's two - I think it's clear who the real intellectual is), demonstrates this unique, heartwarming faith. In absolutely everyone. He believes in every American's fundamental right to start his own unregulated investment bank, to take his children hunting with dynamite if he so pleases, and to harvest precious fuel from sea to shining sea. John McCain knows that the backbone of America is our innovation, our perseverance, our armaments, and the sweet, gushing oil beneath our waters.

Ordinary Americans aren't looking for a lofty-minded socialist dictator with smooth, unblemished gonads that have never known the agony of freedom's struggle; they want a leader who has been fighting for them from day one. They want a warrior president, an axe-swinging thunder god who isn't afraid to bash the skulls of America's enemies to bloody little pieces, an honest miner (and sometimes driller) for straight answers and real solutions. America has received enough "guidance" and "expertise" from effeminate, anti-American east-coast elites from Harvard and Capitol Hill. It's time for our country to pass the torch to a battle-hardened maverick, a man of the people, and a patriot. It's time to elect John McCain president.

Kevin Weltmann is a Classics and American Literature major at Brown. He enjoys contact sports, cooking, and fascism.


--This article was actually written by Wyatt McKean