Oregon Braces for National Election

Eight years of George W. Bush will come to a close tonight, or will they?

Salem-News.com

(SALEM, Ore.) - The United States is just hours away from electing a new President. Political polls have shown Democratic Senator Barack Obama leading the race over Republican Senator John McCain. Americans have learned by now though that polls can be deceiving and some say the numbers do not always show an accurate picture.

Questions over race and patriotism have been major components of the 2008 Presidential campaign.

The poll results indicate that the first black American president is probably going to be elected tonight, and the idea sits poorly with many Americans. In this day and age it seems fair to expect that racism could have fallen to the wayside, but it hasn't.

Barack Obama's past association with Pastor Jeremiah Wright and a professor remembered as a domestic terrorist of the 1960's, William Ayers, have been his sticking points.

The controversy surrounding Wright grabbed the nation's attention in March 2008 when ABC News, after reviewing dozens of Wright's sermons, excerpted parts which were subject to intense media scrutiny.

Obama denounced the statements in question, but after critics continued to press the issue of his relationship with Wright he gave a speech titled "A More Perfect Union", in which he sought to place Dr. Wright's comments in a historical and sociological context. In the speech, Obama again denounced Wright's remarks, but did not disown him as a person.

Ayers is a former 1960s anti-war activist known for the radical nature of his activism in the 1960s and 1970s as well as his current work in education reform, curriculum, and instruction. Ayers co-founded the radical left Weather Underground in 1969. The group was behind bombing public buildings during the 1960s and 1970s. Today, Ayers is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, holding the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar.

John McCain represents the old school in many respects. He is an American war hero and he has many years under his belt as an elected representative. McCain was shot down during the Vietnam War and held as a Prisoner of War for five and a half years.

McCain has been attacked for his switch stance position on issues ranging from support for the current U.S. President George W. Bush to abortion. Many hard right GOP members had a hard time coming to terms with McCain as a presidential choice, but the party came together in support of McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin.

McCain's detractors point to his lack of support for families of POW's and MIA's in the years following the Vietnam War. They also cite him for a series of adulterous affairs that led to his current marriage with an heiress almost twenty years his junior.

Whoever takes the reigns of the United States is inheriting a serious mess. The economy is in shambles, and the nation is involved and making little progress in two wars overseas that have zapped funds and resources. Tonight will be a night of change or it will mark a point in time when the worst policies in our national history will be allowed to continue.

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Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor.
Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines. Tim holds numerous awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), the first place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several other awards including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated with Google News and several other major search engines and news aggregators.
You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com