Politicians are not a lovable bunch of folks.  As a group, they lust for mass approval and immense power and employ the most despicable of means to achieve those ends.  Manipulation of emotion and incitement of ancient prejudice are their stock in trade.

I'm not going to try to claim that Barack Obama isn't a politician.  Nobody who is entirely above the fray will ever succeed in the political arena.  But I do see Obama as offering a significantly different choice than we have been given in recent times.  The extreme wings of both major political parties have been running things for far too long,  The extremists love partisan vitriol, and in recent times they have successfully engineered it into the fabric of our political system.  Right wing Republicans have turned this strategy into a fine art but left wing Democrats are no less partsan - only less successful. 

For me, this election basically requires a decision as to who I believe will be more of a disappointment to his extreme-wing supporters.  Throughout this entire campaign, John McCain has offered no evidence whatsoever that he will be willing to stand up to the Republican "base".  He has repeatedly reversed his own previously held positions to adopt inflexible hard-line stances.  This comes after eight years of George Bush's disastrous, ideologically driven policies and repugnant nose-rubbing tactics.  Most significantly, it comes with the knowledge that the replacement of liberal Supreme Court justices likely to retire within the next four years with people like John Roberts and Sam Alito - the exact sort of folks John McCain has promised to nominate - could leave us with an ultra-conservative Supreme Court certain to eliminate or sharply curtail many of the individual Constitutional rights we now enjoy.  

For all those reasons, and because I believe Barack Obama is a stable, relatively normal guy will govern pragmatically rather than be driven by ideological zeal, he will receive my vote this Tuesday.