George W. Bush is not on the ballot. I'd like to start by throwing that out there.

John McCain is very much his own man who has been fighting for what is right throughout his entire life.

He served this country honorably during the Vietnam War and has stood up for the American people in Congress, often times working across the aisle or even against his own party.

Sen. Obama, Democrats, the media and possibly even many Republicans argue this election is about "change." Who would be the best "change agent?"

I would like to offer up a counter-argument to this line of thinking: This election is not about change, but about progress. Change can be many things, but what it boils down to is simply something different. There can be good change or bad change, right change or wrong change (sometimes known as left change), but progress can be one thing: Simply making things better as you go forward.

While Obama claims to be for the future, his record contains an awful lot of votes for present. The difference between change and progress is no better illustrated than in the differences in the two candidates' current positions on the economy. Obama feels that the United States economy is broken and would like to tell you how he is going to change it.

He will repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to fight globalization with protectionism rather than competing with free trade, he'll punish companies for making profits, and he will do his best to raise your taxes, grow the government, and the regulate economy. Certainly this is change, but is it progress?

On the other hand, John McCain recognizes that the fundamentals of our economy are strong. Fundamentals aren't simply statistics, short-term economic forecasts, or the close of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Fundamentals are the power of the free market and the strength of the American worker that the economy is based on. These things are still strong, and it isn't time to change them.

It is time to fix the problems of today so we can progress towards the future.

The sub-prime crisis and the credit crunch weren't caused by the free market and deregulation, but by our own government's policies that forced banks to make loans to people who couldn't afford them for the politically admirable goal of increased home ownership.

These are policies that Republicans, including John McCain, fought to reform while Democrats, including Sen. Obama, did everything in their power to block because they took campaign donations from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In the same way that Obama let these government sponsored entities use their greed to harm the American people, he wants to reward the administrators at universities like Penn State for raising your tuition by handing out more government money. To help the country progress, McCain wants tax cuts for all Americans and even, gasp, businesses.

The U.S. has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world and we wonder why jobs move overseas. Lowering taxes on business encourages business to come to our country creating jobs and lowering prices. Sen. Obama claims that he will cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans. This claim sounds good, but an interesting question is: How does Obama plan to do this when nearly 40 percent of Americans don't pay income taxes? You can't cut the taxes of people who aren't paying any.

The answer is simply that Obama's plan doesn't even contain tax cuts. It does contain a plan for a one-time refundable tax credit; meaning even if you don't pay taxes, the government will still cut you a check. Anywhere else, taxing one group of people to give money directly to others is known as welfare, and to call it a "tax cut" can be seen as a misuse of the language that is bordering on fraudulent.

On top of all this lofty rhetoric, Obama wants to increase capital gains and dividends taxes, claiming it is for the rich while the majority of the middle class use investments to save for retirement.

We can talk all day about making things different, but only John McCain is interested in the right kind of change that will move this country toward pro-growth policies and progress in the future.

Alex Smith is the chairman of the Penn State College Republicans. His e-mail address is ahs5030@psu.edu.