John!

I completed my mail-in ballot on Sunday and drove it to the County office in Fort Lupton on Monday. Lest anyone be concerned, I voted for Senator McCain and Governor Palin, a straight GOP ticket downstream, and took the anti-union side of all the big referenda.

If you still harbor any doubts about the imperfect McCain, click over to Mary Anastasia O'Grady's comparison of their positions on trade:

The U.S. hasn't elected a genuinely protectionist president since Herbert Hoover, and for most of the last 80 years a rough bipartisan consensus has held that free trade is in the American national interest. The erosion of that consensus is reflected in the gulf between John McCain and Barack Obama on trade, which is probably the widest division at the presidential level since the 1920s.

UPDATE: Professor Mankiw notes that The Times of India gets it:

McCain is one of the few American politicians in either party with the courage and conviction to stand up to protectionist populism. By contrast, Obama embodies protectionism....

McCain has voted 88% of the time against bills creating trade barriers, and 90% of the time against export subsidies for US producers. Few other senators have such a splendid record.

Obama has served a much shorter time in the Senate, and avoided voting on many key issues. He has voted against trade barriers only 36% of the time. He supported export subsidies on the two occasions on which he voted, a 100% protectionist record in this regard.

Whole thing great to be read.

2008 Posted by John Kranz at October 29, 2008 3:06 PM