Next in my series of Post-Election Open Letters, which started with one to Barack Obama, I’d like to write to the opposition and express some things:
Dear Senator McCain,
Thank you for fighting a mostly admirable fight, despite all the mistakes your campaign made during the process and the huge anchor that is the Republican party right now tied around your neck.   I can only hope that I am as spry, intelligent, poignant, and energetic as you are when I’m your age.   It truly does show the power of wisdom and experience.
Some pointers for next time:
ONE: To really reconnect with the public on a Republican platform, you first have to get your party to go back to the days when GOP stood for “Grand Old Party” and not “Grumpy Old Pissants”.   Everyone has to be invited and welcomed, from the young to the old, and you have to tout the standard banners of the traditional Republican platform — minimal government, low taxes, less involvement, rights to the people and states.   The party has become far too clouded to be considered cohesive and folks have a tough time discerning it from the opposition, and when the Democrats have cookies, you’re just screwed.   The Republicans need to get their crap together because, lord knows, I usually love their traditional economic policy.
TWO: When choosing a running mate next time, please think it through more than you did.   The strategy to pick someone like Palin to garner the female vote was a big gamble and one that pissed off more women than won them over, I think.   Frankly, the populus is more intelligent than you give them credit for — do you really think that women will just roll over like that so easily?  Palin proved to be a moron of the worst kind — just enough information to make her dangerous, and not enough sense to shut up when required.   I think you knew this several weeks after making that ticket but, as they say, once you commit you can’t back out without looking wishy-washy.
THREE: The negativity?  I know you were grasping for straws near the end, but the truth is you hurt your campaign more than helped it with all those depressing ads, insinuations, and attacks.  As they say, sometimes small doses are the best way to take your medicine, and that approach might have worked better here.   People are smart — if you say once or twice that someone’s shifty, they’ll figure the rest out for themselves.   But if you hammer, hammer, HAMMER it into their skulls, they’re likely to think you’re either a) full of it or b) a bully.   I and many others found themselves being completely turned off by the constant barrage, and you never want that.
FOUR: We all appreciate the sacrifice you’ve given to our country in the form of military service and performance.  Nobody would ever deny that.   However, using that as a reason for why you’d be a good president is not a valid argument and harping on it does you no good.   A good soldier does not a good president make, and vice versa — you must prove yourself in other ways.   And you have — by being a long-time senator.  Except you voted with Bush too much, so…so much for that.  But the soldier bit?  Thank you.   Thank you a hundred times.   But drop it for an election.
Finally, I’d like to thank you for running for the office.   It must have surely been a huge strain on you, your marriage, and your life in general.  Whether or not I agree with you, I cannot help but admire someone so dedicated to his country and service that he gives up a period of his life — when he really should be out fishing with his grandkids and playing cribbage — to go on the trail for public office.   Bless you for your energy, courage, and determination.
Hopefully you’ll stick around in the public sector for a long time yet; we can always use politicians with your fire and power.    Just give a bit of slack on the conservatism, hrm? 
Sincerely yours,
Nathan Pralle
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