My Two Cents - For What It's Worth - Democratic Underground

NanceGreggs

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Mon Aug-18-08 10:18 PM
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My Two Cents - For What It's Worth

Edited on Mon Aug-18-08 10:24 PM by NanceGreggs

Just thought I’d weigh-in on the current discussion about McCain and the Saddleback forum – for what it’s worth.

The minute I heard about the forum and its proposed structure, I knew that McCain would have the questions well in advance. That’s not because I’m prescient, or know someone on the inside. It was just an obvious conclusion.

We’ve all seen McCain in action over the past few months; we’ve heard the gaffes, seen the moments of utter confusion, the inability to focus. It would therefore seem obvious that his handlers would never have allowed their boy to sit for an hour, alone and unaided, to face questions he’d never heard before and answer them off-the-cuff.

I realize that the GOP have not been particularly smart of late; but let’s face it, they are also not that stupid. There was no way on earth they were going to sit back-stage, fingers crossed, hoping that McCain – a man who can’t get through a four-minute presser without referring to prepared notes – would somehow manage to not commit political suicide on national television.

Within the first few minutes of McCain’s appearance, it was apparent that he knew what was going to be asked, and had been drilled like a schoolboy to memorize his all-too-pat answers. There were no pauses to think or reflect, no hesitation, no false starts; this man was well-rehearsed.

The current cone-of-silence fiasco is, in my humble opinion, a red herring. Had McCain and his handlers listened to Obama’s portion of the program – which they more than likely did – it would have been of no use to them.

Even if a team of note-takers could have come up with answers to the questions they were allegedly hearing for the first time, they could never have compiled the appropriate answers – perfectly crafted and politically well-phrased – and, at the last minute, drilled those responses into McCain’s head.

Remember we’re dealing with a man who often loses his concentration mid-sentence; the idea that he could have been “prepped” from scratch within an hour of the broadcast is, to be frank, totally laughable.

While the McCain camp is, predictably, venting their outrage over the very idea that someone would raise suspicions about their candidate’s whereabouts when he was allegedly ensconced in a cone of silence, the real issue is being all-too-cleverly obscured: What did John know, and when did he know it?

The scam that was perpetrated on the American public was not as simple as a last-minute heads-up that could have potentially advantaged one candidate over another.

The real scam was profferring John McCain – a man who has demonstrated time and again his inability to remain focused, alert, and accurate in his facts – to the public-at-large as someone who can speak spontaneously and coherently without prompting or correction. And given the stakes in this presidential election, that is a scam of truly mammoth proportions.

It’s just my opinion, but the fact that McCain’s handlers are now screaming bloody murder over allegations that he heard the questions posed to Obama during air-time is just another carefully-crafted smoke-screen to hide the real issue, and distract the public’s eyes away from the much more devious sleight-of-hand: presenting McCain as someone with the mental agility he so obviously does not possess.

In fact, making an issue of said allegations plays well for the McCain camp. Anyone who has any qualms about whether McCain heard Obama’s answers, and was therefore able to come up with responses for the same questions within minutes of going on-air himself, will walk away thinking that while perhaps Johnny “cheated”, he also dispelled the notion that he is unable to think and react quickly - giving credence to the idea that such a notion was nothing more than a baseless rumor spread by those commie liberals who would love to see a good man like this go down for the count.

There is a much more compelling story to be looked into here than the he said/she said of who was in the car, who was in the waiting room, and who was in the library with Colonel Mustard and the candlestick.

The real story is why an all-too-often publicly befuddled candidate was willing to set himself up for potential political tragedy, and to what lengths people behind-the-scenes were willing to go in order to ensure that tragedy had no chance of happening.

Just my two cents – for what it’s worth.