The verdict of the American people has not been rendered.  We are still deliberating.

Barack Obama is delivering his “closing argument” in the final week of the 2008 Presidential race.  This includes a half-hour infomercial to air on nearly all the networks save for ABC.

Obama might think he has it all sewn up.  But the jury is still out on him.  The American voter has plenty of reasonable doubt.

There is reasonable doubt concerning Obama’s foreign policy.

Obama plans face-to-face talks with Iran, with Ahmadinejad or with the Mullahs, without preconditions.  When John McCain called him on it, Obama denied he ever said it. Apparently, Obama does not consult his own website. Aside from being either willfully ignorant or willfully deceitful, what exactly has the regime in Iran done to deserve an audience with Obama?

Why is Obama seemingly incapable of acknowledging that the surge in Iraq was a success?  Is it a matter of currying favor with The Daily Kos?  Is it that he can’t give McCain credit?  Or is it that he simply cannot bring himself to acknowledge the success of U.S. troops in Iraq?  After all, this is a man who said that U.S. troops in Afghanistan were doing nothing more than “air raiding villages and killing civilians.”  How can we elect a man Commander-in-Chief who holds our men and women in uniform with such utter contempt?

There is reasonable doubt concerning the people Barack Obama has chosen as colleagues and friends.  There is no doubt Obama cultivated relationships with people who hold the United States in contempt.  The Reverend Jeremiah Wright unabashedly said the United States had the September 11th attacks coming to it when he said after the attacks, “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”  Yet as a parishioner at Trinity United Church for two decades, Obama claims he never heard Wright utter an unkind word about America.  Does Obama really think the American people are so gullible?  Why should we believe Obama when he says Reverend Wright isn’t the man he met twenty years ago?

Obama also claims he didn’t know Bill Ayers’ history with the Weather Underground, even after he launched his political career in Ayers' living room.  If he didn’t know then, when did he find out?  Obama can claim that he was eight years old when Ayers committed these acts; but when Obama was forty Ayers said he had no regrets in setting the bombs and lamented that he hadn’t done more.  It seems Obama is unprepared to act like an adult and take responsibility for the associations he freely chose for himself.

The same can be said for his friendship with Rashid Khalidi, the Columbia University Professor and long time apologist for the late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.  In recent days, it has come to light that the Los Angeles Times has a videotape of Obama attending a tribute to Khalidi in Chicago.  Remember: this was a year before Obama took the nation by storm with his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Boston.  It has been asserted that many anti-Semitic remarks were made at this dinner, including the reading of a poem where Israeli settlers were likened to Osama bin Laden.  Yet the Los Angeles Times refuses to release the videotape because it was obtained from a confidential source. 

Absolute balderdash.

The Los Angeles Times has something to hide.  Did Obama applaud the anti-Semitic remarks?  Or did Obama object to them and take the trouble to say some kind words about Israel?   Either way, the Los Angeles Times is acting like an agent for Obama rather than as an honest scrutinizer disseminating information to a public that has the right to know Obama’s true position on Israel.   

There is reasonable doubt as to how Obama will handle the criticism that is inevitable and unavoidable given the enormous power held by the President of the United States.  One must wonder if an Obama Administration expects the press to be an extension of its communication staff.  When Barbara West, a TV news journalist working for the ABC affiliate in Orlando, Florida asked Joe Biden tough questions about economic policies, the Obama campaign cancelled an interview the network was to have done with Biden’s wife, Jill.  If that wasn’t enough the Obama campaign has declared WFTV persona non grata.  If the American media is expected to refrain from asking Obama tough questions then heaven help us all.

Speaking of Obama’s economic policies, given the ongoing trouble with the American economy, I would be remiss if I didn’t have some reasonable doubts here as well. A few days ago, an interview Obama did with Chicago Public Radio in 2001 surfaced where Obama observed that the Supreme Court “never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth.”  So does Obama want the Supreme Court to start redistributing wealth?  If he does, Obama will take not only the Supreme Court but the entire federal judiciary to places the Founding Fathers neither intended nor imagined.

Much of our economic mess can be attributed to subprime mortgage lending practices.  Obama insists that he was “closely monitoring the subprime mortgage situation for years.” Yeah, Obama was closely monitoring it about as well as Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd.  Why has Obama never taken Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to task for its role in the subprime mortgage crisis?  Could it be because Obama has in less than four years received over $125,000 in political contributions from Fannie and Freddie?  I guess money talks as well as Obama does.

There can be little doubt that Americans will be voting with their wallets in mind this election more so than in previous elections.  This is certainly the case with Joe Wurzelbacher, who we know and love as “Joe The Plumber.” Well, the Democrats don’t love him.  It’s the price you pay for not only daring to question a false prophet but getting him to reveal a part of his prophecy not intended for public consumption.  Instead of trying to get Joe The Plumber’s vote, the Obama campaign tarred and feathered him.  “I don’t have any Joe the plumbers in my neighborhood that make $250,000 a year,” said Joe Biden at a rally the day after the last Obama-McCain debate.  The problem is that Joe the Plumber never said that he made $250,000 but rather that he was getting ready to buy a business that made about $250,000 a year.  But what do you expect from a guy who told Katie Couric that FDR went on TV in 1929 to address the nation about the stock market crash? 

The point here is that the Obama campaign and their sycophants in the liberal media drove a man who, despite his small c-conservative inclinations, was open to voting for Obama into the open arms of John McCain.  One can only wonder how many other voters like Joe the Plumber the Obama campaign will turn into votes for McCain.  This is the single biggest reason that John McCain still has a chance to win next Tuesday’s election. 

This isn’t to say there aren’t reasonable doubts to be had about John McCain and Sarah Palin.  But there are simply far fewer of them.  I cannot conceive of Sarah Palin lambasting a voter for having asked John McCain a question.  I cannot conceive of McCain or Palin associating with people who don’t regret setting bombs to the Pentagon.  I cannot conceive of McCain or Palin ostracizing a news organization unless they had stated something false and refused to correct the record.  I cannot conceive of McCain or Palin ever accusing our brave men and women of deliberately killing civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq or anywhere else.  While they would have a daunting challenge before them, I have no reservations about the country electing McCain-Palin to the White House. 

If I were a younger man I would have voted for Barack Obama.  To paraphrase Winston Churchill amongst many others, “A man of 20 who isn’t a socialist has no heart. A man of 40 who is a socialist has no head.”  As a man who is nearer to 40 than 20 my heart is tempered by my head. 

Barack Obama might think he has all the answers to our problems be they real or imagined.  The prospect of an Obama Administration raises questions which Obama has been unwilling to answer.  The verdict of the American people has not been rendered.  We are still deliberating.   The jury is still out on Barack Obama’s closing argument.