John McCain was, for many years, an honorable Senator. He was not a doctrinaire Republican. He could be counted on to make up his own mind, and speak it. Then, in 2000, he decided to run for President. He ran up against the war machine that was Bush/Cheney/Rove. That machine ate him up and spat him out like a half-popped piece of popcorn. It smeared him, badly, and since he either didn't have or didn't know how to mount a spirited defense, he was defeated.
I think that defeat hurt him deeply. Hurt him so much that he vowed it would never happen again. And so, when it came time for him to run again, in 2008, he embraced it. Yes, he talked about his "Straight Talk Express", and how he was bringing honesty and -- dare one say it -- civility back to national political discourse. But once the nomination was secured, even before the last primary was held, he began to embrace the machine that had once hurt him so badly.
John McCain will be 72 if he takes the oath of office in January, the oldest President ever, even older than Reagan. He is a survivor of multiple bouts with cancer. He knows that for all practical purposes this will be his last hurrah, his last race for the highest office. He may even know that the odds are good he will never survive his first term of office.
So he embraces the machine. He puts out ads breathtaking, even among Republicans, even for (if news reports can be believed) Karl Rove, in their scope of lies and evasions. He reiterates his defining experience -- as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, four decades ago -- as a shield against all questions, denying the voters their chance to hear his positions on substantive issues. He seizes totally innocuous comments by his opponents and blows them up into mind-numbingly trivial complaints (lipstick on a pig, anyone?). And the so-called liberal media, the self-defined guardians of the public's right to know, fail for the most part to call him on any of his statements, even when after being proven as false he continues to repeat them.
If this was not bad enough, McCain the exemplar of "experience" as a prerequisite for the Presidency chooses as his running mate the Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. Palin's total experience consists of being mayor of the small town of Wasilia, and less than one full term as Governor. She was not fully vetted until after McCain chose her to be his running mate. Her political career contains no knowledge of, or dealings with, foreign policy or the military. She appears to have been chosen because of her gender and her appeal to the Christianists (people who call themselves Christian who believe that politics must be subservient to religious doctrine).
McCain has not only shown himself, with this choice, to be at best unserious and at worst breathtakingly cavalier about who probably would be his successor (age and cancer, remember). He has shown his decision-making capabilities to be woefully lacking for even the first decade of a new century. And he has thrown away one of the few arguments against his opponent that do need serious consideration: the issue of expertise in running that large organization known as the United States of America. For if Barack Obama has to answer charges of inexperience in governing, how much more so does Sarah Palin have to answer for?
As for Sarah Palin herself, we find someone who is almost willfully ignorant of major political issues. We also find someone who has been caught in her own repeated lies, most famously about her now-you-see-it-now-you-don't support for the "Bridge to Nowhere". The simple statement, "You wouldn't ask her about this if she was a man," is for now enough to silence serious questioners. And there has been no major candidate for either President or Vice-President who has refused press conferences by whimpering that she isn't being shown sufficient deference by the press corps.
There have been -- there are -- good, qualified Republicans in all levels of government. People who are dedicated to the cause of the country and its people, above the calls for mere party loyalty.
John McCain and Sarah Palin are, I regret to say, not among their number.
"John McCain will be 78 if he takes the oath of office in January, the oldest President ever, even older than Reagan."
ReplyDeleteHe was born August 29, 1936. He's 72.
I could make a clever comment about how the campaign is aging him faster than normally.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'll just say "oops!" and admit fallibility.