Bizarro politics, part X.
Wow.
Surprise: MCCAIN WILL ATTEND DEBATE, says msnbc.com, in caps! No exclamation points, sadly.
First John McCain bewilderingly "suspends his campaign" to (leisurely) jet back to DC to try to resolve a controversial Congressional measure being worked on by a committee of which he is not a member; I suppose the idea was to go and look leaderly without actually contributing to the decision-making process. The campaign suspension was a gesture that is pretty meaningless in the reality sense, as it supposes that a candidate must be out in public with his "campaign" switch on in order for his actions have any effect on his candidacy. Ostensibly, based on this idea, the McCain camp would argue that if the "on" switch ain't there, McCain could run naked through NYC pulling a rickshaw full of heroin-snorting, donkey-humping prostitutes in blackface while eating fire-roasted aborted-fetuses-on-a-stick and nobody'd hold it against him. Because his CAMPAIGN is SUSPENDED, y'all. It don't count when the CAMPAIGN is SUSPENDED!
As I said before, this mostly weirded me out because it seemed awfully impulsive and dramatic. And man, conservative, republican, liberal, democrat - I don't like the idea of a president who is either impulsive or dramatic. On the contrary, I'd ideally like a president who is very, very boring. Careful, intelligent deliberation is unlikely to cause mayhem and destruction, in ANY circumstance. Rash action is.
Of course, the real interesting point of this move was McCain's attempt to delay (or evade) Friday night's scheduled debate. Yesterday he made the bold claim of saying he absolutely would not appear at the debate unless an economic deal had been passed, darn tootin'. As soon as he did this, I immediately felt squirmy. And not just because I'm not real fond of McCain (at least McCain 2.0; McCain 1.0, while I was hardly a fan, at least did not strike me as being so dangerously unstable and inscrutable, as 2.0 seems to be). I felt squirmy because I thought, "Oughtn't it to be a major rule of political campaigns that pronouncing strict ultimatums is a really, REALLY bad idea? Because man, if you have to back down on that, it's going to make you look like a smacked ass." I mean, SOMEBODY was going to have to give, right? If Obama were standing lonely on that stage tonight while McCain was personally making photocopies for Barney Frank, he could have gambled and lost - not a huge loss, and not a loss that would cost him any substantial number of undecided voters, but still, it wouldn't have been good. If McCain had to back down on his ultimatum and agree to attend the debate in spite of pledging he wouldn't.... y'all, that looks bad. That looks real bad. That looks bad even to Republicans.
And here we are.
Obviously, I'm a big ol' gay-lovin', choice-supporting, violence-abhoring, Massachusetts-liberal-commie-pinko, in favor of government oversight and programs to help folks (even if I have to pay taxes to do it) and opposed to the ongoing theft of our government by the wealthy and the greedy and the self-serving who gladly stand on the backs of regular working people and who would exploit developing nations around the world to further fatten their stuffed wallets. Up to this point, my support for Barack Obama and my attendant opposition to John McCain has been primarily rooted in policy differences. I agree with the lion's share of what Obama proposes, and disagree pretty entirely with McCain's ideas. That's politics, man - those are supposed to be the things that lead us to decide in favor of one candidate over another, and they're subjective, and that's the beauty of democracy.
But truthfully, I'm sort of terrified by John McCain right now. What I see here is a man who said to himself, "You know what? Suspending my campaign and refusing to attend the debate at the eleventh hour, all in the name of putting 'country first' is sort of an abrupt and unexpected move - a maverick move, if you will - and it'll be a gamble, but if it pays, it'll pay off big! I'm going to risk it!"
Y'all, I don't want a president who's going to risk it. I don't want a president who's willing to roll the dice in a tough situation. I want a president who's going to carefully make a smart decision, so that he only has to do it once. Because once he's in office, it's not just his campaign or his reputation or his poll numbers he's risking - it's all of our lives. It's our whole country; hell, potentially, it's the whole world.
McCain risked it, he took a certain position knowing it would be difficult to maintain, and when the deciding moment came, he backed down. McCain risked it, and McCain lost. What will the next thing he gambles on be? Do we really want to find out?
Surprise: MCCAIN WILL ATTEND DEBATE, says msnbc.com, in caps! No exclamation points, sadly.
First John McCain bewilderingly "suspends his campaign" to (leisurely) jet back to DC to try to resolve a controversial Congressional measure being worked on by a committee of which he is not a member; I suppose the idea was to go and look leaderly without actually contributing to the decision-making process. The campaign suspension was a gesture that is pretty meaningless in the reality sense, as it supposes that a candidate must be out in public with his "campaign" switch on in order for his actions have any effect on his candidacy. Ostensibly, based on this idea, the McCain camp would argue that if the "on" switch ain't there, McCain could run naked through NYC pulling a rickshaw full of heroin-snorting, donkey-humping prostitutes in blackface while eating fire-roasted aborted-fetuses-on-a-stick and nobody'd hold it against him. Because his CAMPAIGN is SUSPENDED, y'all. It don't count when the CAMPAIGN is SUSPENDED!
As I said before, this mostly weirded me out because it seemed awfully impulsive and dramatic. And man, conservative, republican, liberal, democrat - I don't like the idea of a president who is either impulsive or dramatic. On the contrary, I'd ideally like a president who is very, very boring. Careful, intelligent deliberation is unlikely to cause mayhem and destruction, in ANY circumstance. Rash action is.
Of course, the real interesting point of this move was McCain's attempt to delay (or evade) Friday night's scheduled debate. Yesterday he made the bold claim of saying he absolutely would not appear at the debate unless an economic deal had been passed, darn tootin'. As soon as he did this, I immediately felt squirmy. And not just because I'm not real fond of McCain (at least McCain 2.0; McCain 1.0, while I was hardly a fan, at least did not strike me as being so dangerously unstable and inscrutable, as 2.0 seems to be). I felt squirmy because I thought, "Oughtn't it to be a major rule of political campaigns that pronouncing strict ultimatums is a really, REALLY bad idea? Because man, if you have to back down on that, it's going to make you look like a smacked ass." I mean, SOMEBODY was going to have to give, right? If Obama were standing lonely on that stage tonight while McCain was personally making photocopies for Barney Frank, he could have gambled and lost - not a huge loss, and not a loss that would cost him any substantial number of undecided voters, but still, it wouldn't have been good. If McCain had to back down on his ultimatum and agree to attend the debate in spite of pledging he wouldn't.... y'all, that looks bad. That looks real bad. That looks bad even to Republicans.
And here we are.
Obviously, I'm a big ol' gay-lovin', choice-supporting, violence-abhoring, Massachusetts-liberal-commie-pinko, in favor of government oversight and programs to help folks (even if I have to pay taxes to do it) and opposed to the ongoing theft of our government by the wealthy and the greedy and the self-serving who gladly stand on the backs of regular working people and who would exploit developing nations around the world to further fatten their stuffed wallets. Up to this point, my support for Barack Obama and my attendant opposition to John McCain has been primarily rooted in policy differences. I agree with the lion's share of what Obama proposes, and disagree pretty entirely with McCain's ideas. That's politics, man - those are supposed to be the things that lead us to decide in favor of one candidate over another, and they're subjective, and that's the beauty of democracy.
But truthfully, I'm sort of terrified by John McCain right now. What I see here is a man who said to himself, "You know what? Suspending my campaign and refusing to attend the debate at the eleventh hour, all in the name of putting 'country first' is sort of an abrupt and unexpected move - a maverick move, if you will - and it'll be a gamble, but if it pays, it'll pay off big! I'm going to risk it!"
Y'all, I don't want a president who's going to risk it. I don't want a president who's willing to roll the dice in a tough situation. I want a president who's going to carefully make a smart decision, so that he only has to do it once. Because once he's in office, it's not just his campaign or his reputation or his poll numbers he's risking - it's all of our lives. It's our whole country; hell, potentially, it's the whole world.
McCain risked it, he took a certain position knowing it would be difficult to maintain, and when the deciding moment came, he backed down. McCain risked it, and McCain lost. What will the next thing he gambles on be? Do we really want to find out?