With only a week left before Election Day and with all the major (and minor) newspapers having made their endorsements, I feel that now is the time that The Spade makes it’s first official endorsement for the office of the President of the United States. After much consideration and deliberation by the editorial staff of The Spade we (mainly I) have decided to support Senator John S. McCain for the Oval Office.

I know that my decision may rankle some regular readers, and I know that I have stated in the past that I would not be able to support  a McCain candidacy, but times and circumstances change, and these changes have forced me to reconsider my previous position.

As a conservative Republican the nomination of John McCain has been very problematic for me, as Senator McCain has often done things and taken positions that run exactly counter to my conservative beliefs. Who can forget his complicity in the amnesty plan for illegal immigrants, his assault on free speech with McCain-Feingold, his crazy embrace of the global warming myth, or his participation (along with his lapdog Lindsey Graham) in the Gang of Fourteen? All of these things, coupled with his thin skinned approach to even dealing with conservative critics has left me far from warm to the Arizona “maverick”.

But even with all of that said, this electoral choice boils down to a choice between a candidate that seems to have an antipathy towards  many conservative positions (McCain) and a candidate that seems to have an antipathy towards America herself (Obama). Given that choice, I will choose the former over the latter every day of the week…and twice on Sundays! While McCain may not be in agreement with every position that I personally hold dear, I at least know that he is not trying to attempt to turn America into a socialist paradise. I can safely assume that McCain has no desire to redistribute my (little) wealth under any type of governmental plan, and I can safely assume that McCain is not going to weaken us by cutting and running from Iraq at the first opportunity to declare victory. We know that Obama has in mind “spreading the wealth” as part of his economic philosophy, we know that he is not seriously committed to winning the war in Iraq, and just the last day or so we have seen that his $250,000 figure for who is rich has been adjusted down to a level that Joe Biden now says stands at around $100-150,000.

And I also feel confident that John McCain is not going to use the power he has at hand to attempt to destroy anyone that has the gall to speak negatively to or about him, as Barack Obama has done repeatedly, and most recently with the accessing of the records of “Joe the Plumber”. While the Obama campaign may be totally innocent of any involvement in this mess, it says a lot about the man and the people who support him, that they have no qualms about attempting to smear the reputation of a common man who dared “speak truth to power” to the Almighty Obama.

Lest anyone get the impression that my endorsement of McCain is more of a repudiation of Obama, let me explain why I am willing to support John McCain. First, I respect his long years of service to this country; first as a fighter pilot in Vietnam, then as a Representative from Arizona, and now as a long term Senator from that state. I have always been struck by the notion that McCain’s use of the slogan “Country First” is not just election year rhetoric, but is more of a personal conviction that the Senator is now sharing with the public.

Most importantly, I respect John McCain as a man of honor and integrity. Ironically, it has been the issues that I have disagreed with McCain on the most that have gone the furthest in earning my respect. No matter how wrong I have believed McCain to be on an issue, I have never thought that he based his positions on any of them on political expediency. He could have gained major points with the conservative base of the GOP by standing against the President’s immigration ideas, but McCain took the bullets because it was a stance that he believed in. He could have done what so many Republicans were doing in the early aftermath of the invasion of Iraq and simply supported the status quo strategy of the President and Secretary Rumsfeld, but he instead tried to move the administration to a position where there were more troops added in order to begin securing that country. And McCain could have easily mollified the Republican base by switching his position on what constitutes torture and going along with popular sentiment that water-boarding does not equal torture. Yet McCain stood up and said that he believed that water-boarding was torture, and that the United States should not be involved in using any techniques in interrogation that could be reasonably deemed to be a form of torture.

On two of the three issues I hold a position that is almost the polar opposite of McCain’s, but it was those stands that made me respect the man…even if I didn’t agree with him. Because in all of those instances that I highlighted, I saw a man making a stand on what he honestly believed to be right and a man who was willing to stand up for his principles, regardless of any political price to paid. I admire that about him, and even though I find myself in disagreement with some of his positions, I at least know that this is a man who is doing his best to do right by the nation and not pandering to everyone in sight in an attempt to advance his political career.

I know that there are many readers of The Spade and beyond who are going to cast third party protest votes, and who believe that both Obama and McCain are trying to take the nation in the same direction, and on some issues it may seem that you are right. But the difference is that McCain is not a blind ideologue that is willing to sacrifice anything in order to advance his ideology. McCain, in my opinion, is a man who has always been motivated not by ideology but by what he honestly thinks is the right thing for his country. This has often put him at odds with the base of the Republican Party, but at least he has been willing to stand for what he believes in and not flitted about in an attempt to ride the wave of every “popular” issue that has come up in his career.

I know that the endorsement of The Spade is not likely to change any minds, but hey if Colin Powell can get some attention by making an endorsement, then so can I!