When you get ripe, you're getting rotten

To the Contrary

By Jim Watkins - Jim Watkins

I once worked with a colorful U.S. representative who in another life was "Cooter" from "The Dukes of Hazard" on TV. Ben Jones was king of the one-liner. When someone questioned his ability to hold high public office (he had never held any kind of public office before he ran for Congress), he replied: "When you are green you are growing; when you are ripe; you are rotten."

It has been suggested that it is really not time for Sen. Barack Obama to be president. The implication is that Obama needs to ripen up a bit.

Now that the dust from the conventions has settled, I am convinced more than ever that I want my president to be a bit on the green side. I want a president who is growing in wisdom.

A president having all the doctrinaire answers has gotten this country into a mess.

Someone once said that if you put all the statisticians end to end, they would never reach a conclusion. However, the economic statistics are chilling. Sen. John McCain's claim that our economy is basically sound and his economic adviser Phil Gramm's comment that those adversely impacted by our shaky economy are whiners, shows that they don't get it.

My father-in-law was a homebuilder. He developed the first subdivision in Rock Hill. If he were alive today, he would cringe at the overall housing vacancy rate, which has climbed to 14.36 percent. That is against a 43-year average high of 10.75 percent. (There are roughly 130 million total housing units in the United States, with 18.6 million vacant). To get back to the 10.75 percent mean, the U.S. would have to create about 4.7 million households. To do that, we need to create 6.6 million jobs and not build one additional housing unit.

Cost of borrowing

My brother-in-law, a retired financial officer for a large corporation, reminds me that unless the national debt and trade deficit are reduced drastically, the U.S. government's cost of borrowing money is going to rise significantly, as no one is going to want to lend money to the U.S. unless they get a risk premium. His guess is that our government is two years away from Moody's and S&P lowering the U.S. credit rating. So you think Treasury notes are a good investment?

The Bush administration, pushed by rigid ideology, has taken accountability out of the economic equation. The result has been our financial infrastructure laid waste; home values going down the tube; foreclosures at a record high; and the greatest differential between production and income that we've seen in over a quarter of a century.

McCain's protest that he is not George Bush warmed over is a dog that won't hunt. He seems to have thrown his lot in with ripe economic fruit that is drawing flies.

Originally, McCain opposed the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy. He understood correctly that those cuts, particularly during time of war, would push the national debt to intolerable levels. However, he now favors those same cuts. Rather then push for research into alternative sources of energy, he keeps wanting to give breaks to oil companies. His answer to preserving Social Security is to privatize. And his proposal for health -care reform is the status quo.

By contrast, Obama's administration would level the playing field and boost the economy. The Bush tax cuts that benefit the very wealthy would lapse. Middle-income folks would get a tax break. Ninety-five percent of Americans would get a tax cut. Public investment in alternate energy sources would produce millions of new jobs while moving us away from dependency upon fossil fuels that threatens our globe and hamstrings our foreign policy.

Social Security protected

Social Security would be protected, and every American would have health-care coverage based on a private/public partnership. Providing coverage for everyone is not only the right thing to do in the richest country in the world, it also is good for business. Ask any small business person what their major hurdles are, and providing health care is right up there near the top.

Why vote for Obama? He is a leader who knows he is growing. In that regard, he is not too different from folks like Washington, Lincoln and both Roosevelts. We, as a nation, are growing with him. And that scares those who currently hold power.

It is troublesome to see McCain fall under the spell of those who love to hold on to power, people like Karl Rove, who engineered Bush's wins. The negative attacks on Obama have the fingerprints of Rove all over them. The strength of Obama, a fresh face and a person who can lift up a crowd, is seen by Rove as weakness. Don't you believe it. If ever we needed a fresh face and someone who can lift us up, it is now.

My hunch is that Karl Rove and company are probably behind McCain's choice of a running mate, too. McCain met his running mate only one time before he made his choice. Compare that to Obama's choice of a seasoned public servant whom he had seen in action over a period of years.

Before moving to Rock Hill to be with my mother-in-law, I taught in a seminary. During that time, I had the privilege of working with a program whose board was chaired by Andy Young. Andy often reminded us that the intent of the civil rights movement was to improve the lives of everyone -- "red, yellow, black and white." I believe with all my heart that President Obama, a gift from the civil rights movement, will give our nation the jump start needed to get the ship of state out of the shallows where we are stuck on the mud of the past and back out into navigable waters where we can once again move toward the American dream.

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