September 10, 2008
Dear Senator McCain:
When Senator Clinton didn’t get the Democratic nomination, I was undecided about my vote in November. I’ve followed your career and have admired your toughness and willingness to stand on principles, not party lines. So, I watched the Republican convention to listen to your message. I was encouraged by your statements that you “weren’t working for a party, or a special interest,” that you were working for Americans. However, I wasn’t sure if you had a clear view of my America. So, as an independent-thinking, suburban, soccer-mom who identifies more with a labradoodle than a pit-bull, I’d thought I’d sketch you a portrait of my American family.
We’re raising two young children who attend public school. We are nondenominational Christians. We are economic conservatives who want less taxes and smaller government. We are also a neo-traditional, legally married, two-mommy family. My spouse, the consummate working mom, works seven days a week at her office, and shares equal responsibilities at home. I’m a member of the PTA. I volunteer at my children’s school and am an active participant in their extracurricular activities.
We are true centrists: economically conservative social liberals. Political Party aside, I thought you could relate to the issues important to my family – economy, energy, security and education. We’re concerned about saving money for college and retirement. We worry about raising our kids while caring for our aging parents. We’re concerned about escalating healthcare costs – that one illness could put our family in financial jeopardy, as it did to my own brother just recently. We’re concerned about climate change and want energy policies and solutions that will provide power WITHOUT sacrificing our planet’s well-being or our children’s future. We want our country to lead the world towards global peace not global war. The next President must be the most skillful commander-in-chief this country has ever seen to rectify the terrible mistakes of the last eight years. Finally, in the richest, most powerful country in the world, we must do better than “No Child Left Behind,” which sets standards for academic excellence but does nothing to help schools achieve them.
Your campaign evolved from “EXPERIENCE COUNTS” to “CHANGE IS COMING”, and I eagerly anticipated the announcement of your running-mate to see if he (or she) would reflect the kind of change you were hoping to make in Washington. You presented Governor Sarah Palin.
You say she is a groundbreaking reformer, a change agent with small town roots who relates to women and families – a new face and a new voice for a new administration.
Her choice is certainly groundbreaking and I can relate to her life experience. We’re about the same age and grew up in small towns. We are both moms. Of course, she can shoot a gun and dress a moose. I shoot hoops and the only animal I dress is my dog on Halloween.
But a voice for change?? I read her bio on your website and many articles from respected sources. I learned that she’s voted against women’s rights and hate crimes. She’s hired lobbyists to gain earmarks for her small town while claming she is against them. She’s lied about her stand against the “Bridge to Nowhere.”
In talking about Iraq, she has said “Our national leaders are sending them (our soldiers) out on a task that is from God…” and that “there is a plan, and that it is God’s plan…” If another kind of fundamentalist was speaking these words, we’d be calling her a terrorist. In a world riddled with fundamentalist vitriol and fanatical attacks, the President needs someone at his side who won’t let faith cloud reason, but have faith that reason will prevail.
My family’s values are as traditional as they come. We believe in family, faith, country, integrity and respect for hard work. We believe that if you have passion for what you do and give your best effort, you will find success. These values come from our parents. I’m the daughter of immigrants who arrived in America in the early 60’s. My father-in-law came home from Korea with shrapnel in his body, and went to law school on the G.I. Bill.
However, we’re also part of an America that looks a lot like Joseph’s Technicolor Dreamcoat: 35 million African-Americans; 35 million Hispanics; 13 million Asian/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans; and 6 million people of a multi-racial heritage and counting…*
It’s an America with an increasingly complex and disparate economic landscape that reaches from the highest mountains of wealth to the deepest valleys of poverty and an ever-shrinking plain of the middle-class.
It’s an America whose social structures are as intricate as a patchwork quilt: strips, and swatches of traditional families, blended families, and adoptive families. Single moms, single dads, grandparents raising grandchildren. Families with two moms or two dads, and multi-ethnic families with hapa, mestizo, and afro-cabo-latino-amer-asian children of all shades, shapes, and hair textures. Americans all – stitched together by the thread of a common dream – a better world and a brighter future.
For all your talk of CHANGE, your choice of Governor Palin champions the same narrow-minded, polarizing message the Republican Party has been feeding Americans for the last thirty years.
For those of us who were seriously undecided, you were the viable Republican alternative. I once thought, “If a Republican is going to be in the White House, at least it’s John McCain.”
Not now.
Perhaps I’ve been wrong about you all these years. Perhaps your aspiration to be President overwhelmed your need to be true to yourself. Whatever the reason, you have sacrificed your own record and identity to win this election. This is not the John McCain I’ve admired.
I wish you had chosen differently. It would have made my decision much more difficult, but I would have felt better that change was coming to Washington from both sides of the aisle. It’s a shame that it’s not.
Sincerely yours,
A mom from middle-America
(*based on Census Bureau Report of 2000).
