JohnHenry.US

Tag: palin

  • McCain Hands Obama The Presidency

    This is a curated post originally written Sept. 25, 2008. It requires a little context; this was the last two weeks of the US presidential campaign pitting Republican Senator John McCain against Democratic Senator Barack Obama. There was a fairly serious conflict happening in congress regarding a congressional debate over a proposed funding bailout of “Wall Street” investment banks, and McCain made the abrupt and surprising decision to “suspend his campaign” in order to go back to Washington and debate the bill in the Senate. There was also a scheduled debate for the day after, September 26th, which initially McCain had said he would not attend but he ended up doing so.

    For a more in-depth review of those events I direct you to this contemporary article/timeline at National Public Radio.

    It should be noted that the question of whether McCain would’ve fared any better in the election had he not done that is not as open as my writing here would suggest; Obama was enjoying a strong campaign run and the great likelihood was he would win regardless. Still, it’s an interesting look into that election in its last few weeks, and in the major missteps made by McCain that certainly didn’t help his performance, whether it can be rightly said that it cost him the election or not. -jh, 3-Oct-2023

    A final note; this was about a year before I began my college education, and the discerning reader will note some minor errors in the use of labels and language, such as referring to myself as a “liberal” rather than the more accurate “leftist.” It was precisely these sorts of errors that led me to choose the educational path I did.

    So by now the evisceration of John McCain by David Letterman last night is fairly old news (even though it just happened).

    What I hate about this is that Dave made a lot of points I’d been planning to make myself.

    While it would be easy for the liberal in me to take great joy in watching the Palin legend implode, the reality is it just kind of makes me sad. With all due respect to my Republican friends, I just don’t see how you can continue to support the McCain-Palin ticket after this week. Not only did McCain completely blow a chance to take a lead on the current financial crisis, he managed to hand Obama the election while doing so.

    Consider the position that McCain is now in. If he refuses to attend the debate, Obama can blast him for lack of multitasking skills and an indifference to the needs of the voters to be informed about their candidates’ positions. If McCain attends the debate, then he’s reversed himself, as it’s clear that this is simply not an issue that can be meaningfully resolved in two days.

    Perhaps more importantly, however, is that McCain has once again tipped his hand in several different ways. First, he’s impulsive – sometimes recklessly so – in making decisions. Second, he spins and spins; it would take a truly dedicated Believer to not suspect that the real motivation for McCain wanting to delay the debates is rooted in not only his own lack of preparation, but in a fear that his running mate will fare even worse in the veep debates. Third, it says something very unpleasant about the man’s leadership skills that when the merde hits the fan, his reaction is to slam on the breaks, panic, and demand drastic changes in plan that aren’t actually justified by the situation.

    But all of this is secondary to the real revalation hidden behind McCain’s ‘suspension’ of his campaign – the fact that he has zero confidence in his running mate to step in and handle the duties that he would otherwise be performing. There’s no reason that Palin couldn’t have done Letterman last night. There’s no reason that she couldn’t step in for him nearly anywhere other than the debate itself, but it wasn’t even suggested.

    Palin’s performance thus far has been utterly abysmal outside of her stump speech – which aged so fast you’d think it was suffering from Progeria. Her three major interviews thus far have been populated with stock, rehearsed answers, a glaring lack of meaningful responses, and a recurring impersonation of a deer in the headlights of an oncoming Peterbilt. She even managed to make Katie Couric look menacing and tough, and with no disrespect intended to Ms. Couric, that’s not exactly her strong suit. I mean, come on. “I’ll find out and get back to you?” Did a moose eat her homework?

    The shine is off the Palin apple, I’m afraid, and what’s left is just not much to look at. Throughout this campaign, Obama’s decisions and responses have been measured, reasoned, and careful. McCain’s have been impulsive, reckless, fearful, and pandering, from his selection of Palin as running mate to this latest kerfluffle over ‘suspending the campaign.’

    I submit to you that John McCain has indeed handed the Presidency of the United States to Barack Obama, and now it seems the only thing left for the Republican party to do is leave him as big a mess as they can possibly manage, so they can blame him for not cleaning it up. At every possible turn, McCain has said and done exactly the worst possible thing, and frankly at this point my expectations for him are so low that if he just manages to not blow his top and say something ridiculously impulsive, it will count as a victory.

    It’s a pity, really. Eight years ago, I could have seen myself voting for McCain. Unfortunately, the 2008 John McCain is just the same old neo-conservative, trickle-down, right-wing panderer that the previous candidates from his party have been. Any touch of the ‘maverick’ he once was is long gone; while some folks are just coming to that realization, for me the turning point was when he agreed to speak at Liberty University, after criticizing other candidates for speaking at Bob Jones and labelling Liberty founder Jerry Falwell an ‘agent of intolerance.’

    Politicians are human beings. I accept that, probably more so than most voters. I don’t expect them to be perfect. But McCain has been stepping on his johnson for years, and has made a complete mess of this run at the presidency. The Palin selection was a horrendous move, but then to flat-out lie to Letterman about ‘rushing back to Washington’ only to be caught on feed talking to CBS news when he was supposed to be on Letterman is just the icing on the cake. He flat-out lied. Whether it was appropriate for him to appear on a comedy program or not is beside the point – he could have said that honestly. “Dave, I love being on your show and you’ve been a good friend for a lot of years, but I just don’t feel like a late-night comedy/variety show is the place for a presidential candidate to be in the middle of an economic crisis. I’m going to do the news with Katie tonight, can I take a rain check for say two weeks from now?” That was the approach Obama took with his SNL appearance a couple of weeks ago when Hurricane Ivan was heading for Galveston – he backed out honestly.

    With his bumbling ineptitude, his cynical attempts to pander to any voting bloc he can define, and the consistently dishonest tone of his campaign from the lies in his advertising to this most recent gaffe with Letterman, John McCain has shown clearly that the only change he’s going to bring to Washington is the name plates on the doors.

    Hero? Absolutely. Presidential material? Not on your life, and frankly I think he’s realizing it.

    So on January 20th as President Barack Hussein Obama is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States…be sure to spare a moment of thanks for his opponent in this race. Obama couldn’t have won without McCain’s diligent effort to throw the fight.

  • The Price Of Fear (2008)

    Curated post, originally published 10-Oct-2008

    The lies and bile of the McCain campaign are officially Not Funny Anymore.

    I’ve been quietly concerned as I read and participate in various message groups and discussion fora at the level of seething hatred some McCain supporters – I won’t even call them conservatives at this point – have for Barack Obama.  We have seen a few scattered reports over the last week or so, mostly from Palin rallies but at McCain’s as well, of crowd members screaming such unjustified and ugly things as ‘traitor,’ ‘terrorist,’ ‘liar,’ and worse.  In one instance, at a Palin rally, even the chilling refrain, “kill him!”

    This evening, I read this story, detailing how John McCain got booed at his own rally for saying that Obama is “a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”  The story includes quotes from McCain’s followers at a “town hall” style meeting, complete with ‘socialists taking over this country’ and ‘I don’t trust Obama…he’s an Arab.’  These are clearly the same people that many of us who support the Obama candidacy have been laughing off.  Let’s face it – they’re pretty damned stupid, making political decisions based on rumor, innuendo, and negative ads.  In the exercise of what is, regrettably, a fairly common liberal trait of condescension toward the credulous and naive, we have basically ignored these knuckle-dragging noisemakers because frankly, we find it difficult to believe that anyone is dumb enough to buy in to theridiculous, irrelevant nonsense being churned out by the McCain campaign.

    But it’s gone past funny over the last week.  There’s nothing at all funny about an American citizen shouting ‘kill him’ at a political rally.  There is nothing funny about accusing a presidential candidate of terrorism or treason.  

    People everywhere, across the political, religious, and ‘class’ spectra, are hurting, angry, and frightened.   As the Obama campaign has worked to stay positive – not always with great success – McCain-Palin and their Atwater-Rove-inspired hate machine have continued throwing the negativity in ever-increasing intensity toward Barack Obama.  The Republican’s haven’t just failed to control the negativity, they have actively encouraged it at every turn.  They intentionally stoked those fires in the mistaken belief that the solution to the ineffectiveness of their negative message is to ramp up the negativity; portraying Obama as a terrorist, someone to be afraid of, someone who cannot be trusted, someone who is ‘different than us.’

    And now, it’s spinning out of their control. 

    It seems to have finally dawned on Senator McCain that the politics of hate aren’t winning this election for him, and when he tried to rein them in…his own crowd turned on him. 

    Frankly, I don’t have enough respect for John McCain any more to believe that his attempt to be less negative toward Obama is motivated by any sense of shame, or of concern at the intensity of the hate he has engendered.  I think he just noticed – after weeks of failure – that his negativity isn’t bringing in the voters.  The problem is that in ‘energizing the base,’ McCain and Palin have given those who would themselves aspire to radical terrorism a sense of validation and righteousness.  

    John McCain has deliberately turned the slim possibility of Obama’s assassination into something that is frighteningly plausible.  We are faced with two possible scenarios:  either McCain is just too ignorant to have understood the power he was unleashing, or he understood it and unleashed it anyway because he cares more about getting elected than about the consequences of his filthy, digusting, fear- and hate-mongering tactics.

    Now – too late – he tries to put the brakes on, and like the fabled sorcerer’s apprentice, he is faced with the frightening fact that no matter what he does, the brooms continue to fetch water even as the house is flooding.

    I’m forced to wonder if McCain or his ‘brilliant’ team of strategists who have engineered this pretty hate machine have considered the fear that’s going through my mind right now…the fear of how big the explosion will be if one of these ignorant, hate-filled, seditious domestic terrorists actually manage to make a meaningful attempt on Barack Obama’s life.

    Senator McCain can’t un-ring this bell.  The brooms keep fetching and the water keeps pouring in, even as the apprentice who thought he was commanding the brooms is overwhelmed and drowned.

    And that’s a cute, funny little analogy, you know.  John McMickeymouse waving his wand ineffectually at all those disobedient brooms that he’s brought to life.  The problem is, it’s not funny anymore.  It’s getting ugly.  Bobby Kennedy ugly.  Abraham Lincoln ugly.

    John McCain has failed, miserably, in his first real test of leadership.  A leader would never have opened this Pandora’s box in the first place.  A leader knows that you do not set loose forces that you can’t control. A leader knows that in a place and time when people are already frightened, angry, and suspicious, to further encourage that and direct it against a political opponent can have dire consequences.

    John McCain brought those brooms to life.  The man is 72 years old and has been a national leader for nearly 30 of those years…and yet he lacked the foresight and judgment to consider what sorts of consequences would be in the list of potentialities if he chose to pour gasoline on that fire for the sake of his own ambition.

    If for no other reason, this stunning lack of judgment and blind ambition make it clear:  John McCain is not fit to be the President of the United States, and that hate-filled, bigoted, wretched joke of a woman he selected for his vice-president doesn’t deserve the slightest bit of attention or respect from the people of this country.  Time and time again, through poor judgment, through the abuse of power, through the malicious disregard for the sancitity of the offices they hold and seek, they have proven themselves profoundly unfit for service.

    Let’s just hope the gun they’ve loaded with such irresponsible avarice is never fired…unlike Barack Obama’s “relationship” with Bill Ayers, the results of such a tragedy are something that is really frightening.