McCain Melts Down (Ronald McDonald Rejects VP Offer)

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McCain Melts Down (Ronald McDonald Rejects VP Offer)
John McCain
by David Michael Green | July 25, 2008


I'm not exactly sure what (former?) chief economic advisor to the McCain campaign Phil Gramm would say nowadays about his pal John's current situation, but I wouldn't be surprised if it included the word 'whiney'.

The only thing more egregious than the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune pummeling any Republican candidate for president in 2008 is the bunglingly inept campaign of a guy who's been in politics forever, and even run for president once before.

No small part of the campaign's ineptness is its predicate, either. McCain sold his soul eight years ago, when he let Rove bugger him like some mere Democrat, spreading rumors in South Carolina about the old man's sanity and about how his adopted daughter from Bangladesh is actually a love child from a liaison with a black woman. It was lame enough that McCain didn't just let loose and open a can of whoop-ass on Bush during the subsequent debate (which might have gotten him the nomination, given how much terrified GOP primary voters appreciate violent tendencies in their politicians), but then it just got worse, as the defeated war hero later traipsed around the country campaigning for the victorious war avoider. And then it got even worse yet at the convention in 2004, as McCain fawned all over Bush and ever since has gone to the wall supporting the Iraq debacle, transparently the worst foreign policy cock-up in American history, and somewhat less transparently its greatest crime.

Now we see McCain committing stupid mistake after stupid mistake in a campaign that already once experienced a near-death experience from precisely such ineptitude. All this, it's worth remembering, in a year in which any Republican running for president would need to be near perfect to have the slightest prayer of winning. Americans have hardly ever been more surly about their politics, nor despised an incumbent quite so much. They've never in recorded polling history expressed so much conviction that the country is headed in the wrong direction. The country is fighting two endless and losing wars. Just about every economic barometer in existence is in record awful condition, ranging from national debt to personal debt, from the trade deficit to the value of the dollar, from inflation to unemployment, from the Dow to mortgage meltdowns. That alone should be plenty to sink the aspirations of any representative of the incumbent party faster than a gaping hole in a concrete barge.

Remember the question Ronald Reagan used so devastatingly against Jimmy Carter in 1980? "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Like any good Republican campaign tactic, it was a lie, rooted in an appeal to the public's most base attitudes. But, also like any good Republican campaign tactic, it worked great. It was a lie because conservatism was in fact the reason that people were less well off, and would be even more so after the thirty years of conservative policy ascendency which would follow. And it was base because the question - especially from such a cardboard cowboy patriot like Reagan - should have been, "Is the country better off than it was four years ago?" In any case, I hope Obama has the smarts to use either variation, and never cease to remind voters, when he does, that this was Reagan's question, in order to innoculate it from any plausible response from that (nauseatingly frequently) self-described "foot-soldier in the Reagan revolution", John McCain. (Of course, McCain never mentions the part about how Ronnie and Nancy disowned him and wouldn't talk to him anymore, after McCain unceremoniously and selfishly dumped his first wife, who happened to be their good friend. After that, he became the door mat in the Reagan revolution.)

Anyhow, combine all of that with the corruption, arrogance, bungling and lies, with Katrina and Guantanamo and Social Security, with torture and domestic spying and ruined reputation abroad - put all of this together and it would be a miracle if any Republican could possibly win this year. There just aren't enough swiftboaters out there to put this Humpty-Dumpty back together. There just aren't enough looking glasses to step through before this Republican disaster can be twisted sufficiently into something that even vaguely resembles a desirable government. Even those greatest purveyors of those most absurd fairytales, evangelical preachers, don't have the heart for it this year. And why would they? Having seen that they can influence politics, they are learning that it's a two-way street, brother. George W. Bush is many things, but a recruiter for the religious right is not one of them. It doesn't require a prophet to see that their (not so) little pious enterprises are going to go the same way as Republican members of Congress if they continue to be associated with the Boy Wonder.

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