In his last column for the Washington Post, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer endorsed Senator John McCain for president. He made clear in his column that he did not have a lot of appreciation for conservatives who turned their back on the Republican Party recently in order to support Senator Barack Obama.

Last week, Krauthammer argued that McCain should become America’s next president because of the situation in the world: there are too many crisis out there, Krauthammer argued, for an inexperienced president.

Although quite some agreed with his column that McCain has far better foreign policy credentials than Obama, they said that this did not matter much this time around, because this year, domestic issues should dominate. “Okay,” Krauthammer writes, lets “start with economics.”

First, Krauthammer argues, both candidates are no experts on the economy, and neither should that be demanded of them. Second, both have surrounded themselves with the best of the best advisers on the economy, meaning that “neither candidate has an advantage on this issue.”

“On other domestic issues, McCain is just the kind of moderate conservative that the Washington/media establishment once loved — the champion of myriad conservative heresies that made him a burr in the side of congressional Republicans and George W. Bush,” Krauthammer continues. “McCain is who he always was. Generally speaking, he sees government as a Rooseveltian counterweight (Teddy with a touch of Franklin) to the various malefactors of wealth and power. He wants government to tackle large looming liabilities such as Social Security and Medicare. He wants to free up health insurance by beginning to sever its debilitating connection to employment — a ruinous accident of history (arising from World War II wage and price controls) that increases the terror of job loss, inhibits labor mobility and saddles American industry with costs that are driving it (see: Detroit) into insolvency. And he supports lower corporate and marginal tax rates to encourage entrepreneurship and job creation.”

As Krauthammer argues, it’s an “eclectic, moderate, generally centrist agenda in a guy almost congenitally given to bipartisanship.”

On the other side there is Obama. Obama, Krauthammer rightfully points out, “talks less and less about bipartisanship, his calling card during his earlier messianic stage. He does not need to. If he wins, he will have large Democratic majorities in both houses. And unlike Clinton in 1992, Obama is no centrist.”

He then points out some of the policies Obama will want to pursue, or let his Democratic Congress pursue. All plans are far from moderate (liberal) let alone centrist. Among these plans are:

1. “Card check, meaning the abolition of the secret ballot in the certification of unions in the workplace. Large men will come to your house at night and ask you to sign a card supporting a union. You will sign.”

2. “The so-called Fairness Doctrine — a project of Nancy Pelosi and leading Democratic senators — a Hugo Chávez-style travesty designed to abolish conservative talk radio.”

3. “Judges who go beyond even the constitutional creativity we expect from Democratic appointees. Judges chosen according to Obama’s publicly declared criterion: ‘empathy’ for the ‘poor or African American or gay or disabled or old’ — in a legal system historically predicated on the idea of justice entirely blind to one’s station in life.”

In addition to the points raised above, Obama will, as Krauthammer explains, see over “an unprecedented expansion of government power.” Of course, the Bush government has also increased the size of the government, especially through the bailout, but that is nothing compared to what Obama plans on doing plus, the bailout was necessary, Obama’s, Pelosi’s and Reid’s grand plans are not. ”

This is not socialism. This is not the end of the world. It would, however, be a decidedly leftward move on the order of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The alternative is a McCain administration with a moderate conservative presiding over a divided government and generally inclined to resist a European social-democratic model of economic and social regulation featuring, for example, wealth-redistributing growth-killing marginal tax rates.”

In short, the notion that somehow McCain’s only strength is foreign policy is bogus. There are very serious domestic issues on which centrists will generally prefer McCain’s views to Obama’s, especially when Democrats will have large majorities in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

Although some moderates have said recently that they believe they can vote for Obama for president, and then for Republicans in Congress, the reality of the matter is that, from the looks of it, that will mean that Republican candidates will be defeated nonetheless, as will McCain for the presidency. This strategy is likely to result in a Democratic fillibuster-proof majority in Congress, working with a presidential candidate. The only way, it seems to ensure divided government and to force Washington D.C. to govern in a reasonably moderate way is by voting for John McCain.

Now, although I am obviously not eligable to vote in the United States, and although I have frequently said that I believe both men are not the best of the best, I have now come to the conclusion that I hope that McCain will become president. I wrote a week ago that I would probably vote for a third party candidate if I were America. Now, shortly before the elections, however, I will have to take those words back: McCain is better than I thought - he has controlled his temper, and, unlike Obama, he truly seems willing to work with others, and he remains strong on one of the issues I care about most which is foreign policy, while convincing me in the last week or two that he has plans for the U.S. economy that would help it survive the current crisis, and come back stronger than ever before.

No, I don’t have the right to vote in this election, but I have something to say to American readers of this site nonetheless: America, please vote for John McCain. He is the only candidate running who will pursue a solid and wise foreign policy; who will be able to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons; who will work with Europe on a multilateral basis; who will encourage free trade everywhere, unlike Obama who will try to change NAFTA and other free trade agreements; who will pursue an effective economic policy (which is obviously in the interest of Europeans such as myself).