John! Where the hell have you been?
Have you ever seen the movie The Natural? Home town boy, full of talent and hope travels aboard a train bound for can't-miss stardom. On the way he encounters a femme fatale who seduces our hero and shoots him. (In the film, she also shoots herself. In real life the current President only shoots himself in the foot...over and over). Anyway, after a long period of convalescence and reflection, the hero reappears, broken but not bowed, and takes center stage for one more glorious swing of the bat. Fireworks! THE END.
The John McCain that walked to the podium on Thursday at the Xcel Energy Center bore a striking resemblance to the pilot of the Straight talk Express of eight years ago. Anyone listening to the speech had to be impressed with the cool, confident upbeat Senator from Arizona. Gone was the right wing rhetoric that has soiled his recent campaign. Gone too was the sucking up to George W. Bush and his so obviously failed administration. McCain was the Republican Nominee for President of The United States and, God-damn-it, he doesn't owe George Bush or Dick Cheney a damn thing.
America saw a John McCain in St. Paul that the evil forces of Republicanism identified in 2000. An off-the-reservation maverick (I'm starting to hate that word) who could never be relied upon to just "go along". George Bush, on the other hand, was a clueless lightweight who could easily be handled by Cheney, Rumsfeld and the other holdovers from his father's crowd. No doubt about it, McCain had to be stopped. They elicited the paunchy Machiavelli, Karl Rove to torpedo McCain. Whether McCain might have made a better American leader never entered into the equation. They laid a trap in South Carolina and, before you could say "illegitimate black baby" GWB was accepting the nomination. Well, that was then and this is now.
During his acceptance speech, McCain took steps to right a few wrongs. He was unafraid to lambaste the direction in which the country is heading (thanks to GWB). He was unafraid to point out that America needed change. (Now where have I heard that before?) I half expected to switch the channel to HBO and find McCain calling Bush an unprincipled asshole. McCain was also unafraid to go head to head with one of the most powerful forces in America today...Thursday Night Football. As in McCain's speech, Washington took a terrible beating.
It's comforting to believe that your leaders are reasoned, intelligent people who have a sense of what is right and, if elected, are prepared to act correctly. Nothing, and I mean nothing about the last eight years would provide any of that comfort. The cynical , politics-is-everything, scorch the earth policies of the Cheney/Bush administration (let's start calling a spade a spade) provided a sad lesson in how not to govern. Not since the paranoid days of Richard Nixon have we seen this level of vitriolic leadership. Even McCain was holding his nose.
If McCain's calculations are correct, he can let Sarah Palin carry the conservative banner in the campaign while John focuses on the moderates. They can sell the reversal of Rowe v. Wade to the Evangelicals (include the Catholics) who clearly don't care about any other issue, while peddling strong leadership and superior experience to people with a little more on the ball. Makes sense to me!
The only situation that might derail this glorious plan is that pesky electorate. Should McCain's message fail to gain traction among the faithful in Ohio, Virginia and Colorado,I expect Honest John to resort to some of the sleazy tactics that surfaced during the summer. Karl Rove may not be on McCain's speed dial but his card is smoldering in the Roledex.
We have two months until the "only poll that matters" is taken. The Obama campaign has shown remarkable restraint in the field of below-the-belt politics. (Let's remember that bloggers who attempt to exploit the pregnancy of Bristol Palin do not represent the candidate.) This is shaping up to be a principled contest, run by two men who truly believe that the American people can decide the outcome on the issues. Let's just hope that the McCain people pay more attention to the Marquis of Queensbury and less to the WWE.
1 comment:
The problem was that the country never saw the Real McCain then or now. He got knocked out early on - viciously and dishonorably. He spent most of the next 8 years sucking up to the people who slimed him and his daughter. He even hired many of them for his campaign. He went along with almost everything Bush wanted, even at the end of the day signing on to torture. To get the nomination, he abandoned his own positions on, inter alia, taxes and immmigration in favor of right wing orthodoxy.
It's not clear if there is a real McCain. My guess is that all the talk about running an issues campaign is bull. He will send Palin out to do the dirty work and try to pretend he is taking the high road.
My reading is that McCain has wanted to be President most of his life and will now do whatever he thinks is necessary to win. The question then will be how much of his soul he has left after that.
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