John McCain is a better candidate than Barack Obama. He has more experience in politics. He has a better record of reaching across the aisle. He has a knack for predicting the future and blowing the whistle on poor policies and schemes. He was out front in opposition to Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, fought the peacekeeping mission in Somalia during the 1990s, and voiced disapproval of the flawed counterinsurgency policies in Iraq, among other things. His progressive healthcare plan is much more likely than Obama’s to produce real “change.” He would be a bipartisan president, able to use his experience and connections to move legislation through Congress. He is a hero—spending five years in a torture camp and conducting himself the way he did ought to be enough to win him the presidency. True to his image, he has fought for greater accountability in our political system. He tried to put an end to campaign finance laws that permit the nasty advertising which with Obama is now killing him. For his part, McCain can’t fight dirty because he actually wrote the law against it. McCain’s ideology is guided exclusively by honor and love for his country. He is, quite simply, the Most Valuable Player of politics.

Despite McCain’s superior qualifications, Obama is probably going to be our next president. A man about whom we barely know anything will be our next commander-in-chief. While he didn’t exactly cause our economic crisis, neither did he confront his own party when they blocked legislation that would have established a regulatory agency for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He clings to an appallingly naïve claim that North Korea and Iran started enriching uranium because the United States government wouldn’t talk to them. Admittedly, he is smart. He was president of the Harvard Law Review. There is a reason that John McCain said to the NAACP on July 16, “Don’t tell him I said this, but [Barack Obama] is an impressive fellow in many ways.” If there’s one thing a president must be able to do, it is win popular support. And it goes without saying that Obama does this very well. The power of celebrity can be a game-changer.

Nonetheless, this does not change the fact that Obama has no experience. When voting for the next president, especially with the challenges he will inevitably face over the next four years, we shouldn’t be assuming a gambler’s mentality. McCain has passed the hardest tests, yet we’re about to see if a rookie can save the world.

Many people, notably former Secretary of State Colin Powell, have argued that while John McCain was a truly admirable candidate in 2000, his pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as running mate undercut the legitimacy of his experience. It’s true that Palin has become McCain’s Achilles heel. The interview with Katie Couric ruined her. In everything else, she has been impressive. It is not her fault that she has received some of the most explicitly sexist treatment ever to go unnoticed, or ignored, depending how you see it, by the mainstream media. Anyone who claims that the reporting in this election has been free and fair just isn’t paying attention. The media has practically elected Obama. The McCain campaign has had to bring out Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko only because the reporters aren’t doing their job in investigating these connections. Although nothing he has said has been even slightly racist, McCain has been declared a bigot while Obama isn’t even slapped on the wrist for effectively calling McCain senile. Sarah Palin is faced with people wearing T-shirts calling her a “cunt” at rallies and no one blinks an eye. Can you imagine if the same were done for Obama with the word “nigger?”

There could be a very radical shift to the left if Obama is elected and the Senate becomes filibuster-proof for the Democrats, both of which appear very possible. That is something that undecided voters should consider. It is true that Barack Obama could be a great president. Still, you do not have to be on the left or the right to admit that this election has been a sham. Women everywhere should be outraged at the treatment of Sarah Palin, regardless of her politics. My only hope is that if he is elected, Obama realizes that he was lucky to beat such a well-qualified politician and honors that fact in office. The perfect storm of an unpopular Bush, the economic crisis, and the war in Iraq brought McCain to his knees. Now Obama has a responsibility to McCain and the American people to show us he is the sort of president we hoped he might be.