Let me say at the outset that everyone is acting within their rights here. It’s the hotel owner’s property, and if he wants to stick a sign there that’s his right. But the funny thing about free speech is that everyone has it, so if other people want to express their negative views, up to and including a call for a boycott, that is their right.

Not all businesses are alike. They come in different sizes, and serve different needs. If, for example, the city’s tow truck contractor has Obama stickers on all his trucks, might someone with a McCain sticker on the car feel justified in being a little put out?

A hotel is a public accommodation. They’re in the hospitality business. They take all comers, so long as they have the money and obey the rules. I think a sensible hotel owner would want everyone who walks through the door to feel comfortable. By taking sides with one candidate in a hard-fought national election, the hotelier is making some portion of his customers feel unwelcome.

This is certainly his right, and I don’t dispute that. But it’s also the right of those who disagree with him to make their feelings known. I don’t know enough about the hotel business to be able to say what percentage of revenues or profit contribution comes from itinerant travelers as compared to more local enterprises that might book events in meeting rooms. My gut says that these are both substantial factors.

My gut also tells me that the local enterprises are more volatile, or at least more personal, as opposed to itinerant travelers who more typically book on the Internet or through corporate travel bureaus and therefore are unaware of any of this until they approach the place in their rental car at 10 p.m. are either soothed or outraged.

The hotelier in this case, whether he did so after careful thought or mere impulse, learned that his local customer base doesn’t share his political views and is not shy about making that fact clear. Once again, everyone is within their rights.

Maybe the hotelier decided that whatever publicity he might get, and resulting business from like-minded local customers, outweighed any potential negative reaction. Or to put it differently, maybe the whole thing was the product of some weighing and balancing of options, in which the hotelier decided that appealing to McCain partisans would outweigh the negative reaction from Obama partisans.

To me, having been around the block, I go back to the idea that, in my heart of hearts, I consider a hotel to be a hospitality operation that welcomes everyone. Even if a hotelier had a political sign that I agreed with, a voice in the back of my head would be murmuring that this is an operation willing to make some people feel less welcome than others, and that therefore the appropriate relationship between vendor and customer had been disrupted.

Or, to put it more directly, I really don’t want my hotel to endorse a political candidate. Not even my own candidate. I’m there for a good night’s sleep, a clean room, cable TV, and plumbing that works, and maybe a restaurant and room service. I’m not sure I want them to be electioneering, even if I agree with their point of view.