Long-time Democrat switches to McCain

Published July 4th, 2008

By John Johnston
Managing Editor

“I looked beneath the surface -- and he lost me,” said Jacqueline Fogg.

“He” is Barack Obama – and Fogg is among a growing number of long-time Democrats who are not only dissatisfied with Obama as the party’s presidential candidate – but like Fogg, are now actively working to elect his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain.

Fogg, an award winning international film producer and writer, spoke to Boca Raton Republican Club members recently, advising that after many years as “a registered Democrat, I started to listen to what John McCain was actually saying, instead of the way Obama is saying it.”

She claimed that Obama was “mesmeric – can sway the masses.” 

She was particularly critical of Obama for saying “we’re going to pull out of Iraq, except to deal with Al Qaeda.”

That’s intellectually dishonest, Fogg said, arguing that Obama can’t say on one hand he would pull the US out, and at the same time, keep troops there to deal with Al Qaeda.”

“At least say I’m keeping the troops there,” she said.

Keeping the troops there was in fact central to her remarks.

“Now we’re telling Iraq to get lost,” she said, “and we’re not that kind of country.  We have a lot of image building abroad to do, and I don’t see how we can do that by pulling out of Iraq and dumping everybody.”

“I met with the Iraqi ambassador,” she continued, “and he tells me the worst thing you can do to us is leave.”

Fogg said she is now actively involved with the Women for McCain organization – in fact, she said, “This has somehow become a woman’s election.”

She urged the audience to “get out and talk” – and in particular with “people you don’t ordinarily talk to.”

Pressed by one audience member, Fogg offered that she’d like to see Mitt Romney chosen as McCain’s running mate.  She cited Romney’s “business experience,” and as that kind of experience is going to be needed soon in Washington.

“!0-15 Years”

The daughter of a English Royal Air Force pilot, Fogg has written and produced more than 155 television programs, film scripts and children’s books. Her work has been broadcast on national television to over 10 million viewers and has won the Consumer Electronics Show for “'Best Original Children's Television.”

And while she now candidly admits she was initially “swept up” in Barack Obama’s rhetoric, “I became a convert.”

“I don’t like being told by the press who’s going to be the next president,” she said, and particularly if the one being anointed “is so inexperienced.

“He doesn’t have enough experience,” Fog said, adding:  “Maybe in 10-15 years, he’d be a good president.”

In addition to her other work, Fogg was invited to the United Nations for her work in Southern Africa and was present at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration reception. She sat on the umbrella body for Montessori in Southern Africa as a way to educate the previously disenfranchised population. She has trained and taught hundreds of workshops in the townships in the “teach the teacher program,” which she initiated.