Let’s start with my voting history, so you’ll know where I’m coming from.

In my first eligibility to cast a ballot in a presidential election — in 1972 — I could not bring myself to vote either to re-elect Republican Richard Nixon or replace him with Democrat George McGovern. I cast a write-in vote for the 19th century libertarian, Lysander Spooner, for president.

In 1976 I was one of the activists in the “Vote for Nobody!” campaign, and did not vote either for Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter.

In 1980 and 1984 — even though I liked him better than any other major-party candidate for president since I’d become eligible to vote — I refrained from voting for Ronald Reagan. I remained a non-voter on the Jack Parr principle that “voting only encourages them.”

In 1988 without even a major-party candidate on the ballot as appealing to me as Reagan, I again refrained from voting.

By 1992 I’d argued myself into becoming a voter again, on the principle that if I believed in self-defense with a gun, I could believe in self-defense with a proxy gun — the ballot. But unable to vote for either George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton, I voted for Ross Perot.

In 1996, I half-heartedly voted Bob Dole for President as an alternative to re-electing Bill Clinton, who’d managed to push unconstitutional gun-ban legislation through Congress.

In 2000 I broke with most other libertarians and supported George W. Bush for President. I did that not so much because I thought George W. Bush would promote libertarian ideas even near to the extent that Ronald Reagan had done — sometimes honored by Reagan more in the breach than actual policy. I supported Bush more because I concluded that, between the two major-party candidates, a Bush presidency would be less destructive than that of the other guy, Al Gore. Also, I’d been impressed that, in his first term as governor of Texas, Bush had kept his campaign promise to legalize licensed concealed-carry of handguns in that state.

I won’t second-guess my 2000 judgment beyond the thought that, no matter how bad a president Bush was, I don’t think Al Gore would have been any better following 9/11 than Bush turned out to be. I didn’t have a problem with the invasion of Afghanistan to punish the Taliban for harboring Osama bin Laden, nor the invasion of Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, whom the U.S. had armed with WMDs he’d used against Iran and the Kurds. Sometimes, when your dog foams at the mouth, you have to put him down — and Hussein and his rape-room sons had it coming.

In 2004, I again supported George W. Bush over the other major-party candidate, John Kerry, for the same reasons as in 2000.

I regard George W. Bush’s presidency as a mitigated disaster.

George W. Bush was as bad or worse as any Democratic president in my lifetime when it came to the economy. Under his leadership the Republican Congress outspent Tip O’Neill on his worst day.

Instead of leaving the balance of power in Iraq intact by leaving the Baathists in office and withdrawing after the two stated missions (1) completing WMD inspections and (2) killing or capturing Saddam and his sons, Bush mired the U.S. in a long-term boots-on-the-ground occupation and engaged in Clintonesque nation-building with a European-style socialist constitution for Iraq that would have made even Woodrow Wilson blush.

On September 12, 2001, George W. Bush could have signed emergency executive orders — swiftly followed by legislation — to suspend federal restrictions on domestic production of oil and coal, pushed for legislation sun-setting the importation of Middle-Eastern Oil, and used the trillion dollars he instead wasted on the occupation of Iraq to subsidize switching the economic infrastructure of the U.S over to twenty different sorts of alternative energy.

Considering that following 9/11 most Americans would have been happy to nuke the Middle Eastern sands into glass, launching a drive on 9/12 to sunset American dependence on Middle Eastern oil beginning would have been passed by acclamation … by both parties.

And, yes, we could have fought terrorism without either the mostly-symbolic Patriot Act — and the more stealth bills that actually negatively impacted our freedoms — and without the gigantic new federal bureaucracy that became the Department of Homeland Security.

Which brings us to 2008.

During the Republican primaries, I supported Ron Paul.

Before today, when John McCain — who’s always been to the liberal side of the Republican Party — chose a true conservative — Sarah Palin — as his running mate, I thought Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr — who while in Congress wielded real power — stood a chance of receiving as much as 7-8% of the vote from disaffected conservatives — making him the first impactful Libertarian Party candidate since the party was formed.

Until this past Wednesday, I was planning to vote for Bob Barr.

Then, last night, I heard Barack Obama, in his acceptance speech, break with the establishment interests running both major political parties by declaring that he would end U.S. dependence on Middle-Eastern oil within ten years … and he even used the “N” word — nuclear.

Even knowing that I objected to much of his social policy, that was enough to get my vote.

Then today, when Sarah Palin accepted John McCain’s offer to be his running mate on the Republican ticket, I saw another maverick willing to break with the energy establishment. This Alaskan governor supports both drilling for oil in ANWR and freeing the U.S. from the major oil companies’ plans to keep the American people buying oil from people who’ll use the proceeds to finance anti-American terrorism.

So I’ve decided how I’m going to cast my ballot on November 4, 2008.

I believe Barack Obama when he says he wants to be President of the United States. This separates Obama from the last three presidents, who acted like they were — as author Brad Linaweaver put it in an astutely descriptive book — President of the World. Barack Obama’s rhetoric struck me as authentically populist and patriotic.

I also think Sarah Palin was chosen to be John McCain’s running mate for the same reason Jimmy Stewart’s Jefferson Smith was chosen in the 1939 Frank Capra classic, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The politicos running the Republican Party consider Mrs. Palin a hick from the sticks who’ll con the yokels with her sincerity but who will be essentially harmless to their nefarious plans to end American sovereignty, American independence, and American exceptionalism.

I think Mrs. Palin is a real patriot who might be as dangerous to her masters as Jeff Smith turned out to be.

So on November 4th, I will be writing in Barack Obama for President and Sarah Palin for Vice President.

Under our Constitution, it’s up to the Electoral College to elect the President and Vice-President of the United States. Since there is neither a constitutional nor legal obligation requiring electors to vote for the candidates to which they’re pledged, the popular vote is merely advisory, anyway.

If for the first time in my life at age 55 I can cast a presidential ballot for a Democrat, how hard can it be for the presidential electors to vote their consciences and vote for the two best candidates out of the four the major parties are offering us?

Author and filmmaker J. Neil Schulman has started a new website at www.Obama-Palin.com