Check out this Huffington Post article showing Barack Obama in Philadelphia once again stealing John McCain’s thunder.
This reminds me of an idea of Sartre’s that I learned in a class on existentialism. Here’s the existentialist definition of a hero: someone who does heroic things. See, existentialists don’t just allow someone to walk around labeling themselves a hero, and according to this philosophy, the best that could be given to John McCain is a “used to be” status. Really… what has he done in the last month but run from every opportunity to show his heroism? No, doing a speech in the rain does not trump being a P.O.W., but it does show in a very visual way how this former P.O.W., for whatever reason, has lost some of his supposed determination and perseverance. And again, I have to bring up the Rolling Stone article that questions whether he even ever truly was the mythical hero that he’s been promoted as. Yes, it is undeniable that John McCain suffered in ways that most of us don’t even want to imagine, and he made great sacrifices for his country. But it is not 1973. He was a hero, like many other P.O.W.’s who are not running for office, but no matter how many repetitions of the story we hear, talking about the past does not make it present.
And then there’s Sarah Palin, riding on the coattails of the myth. John McCain is her own personal Jesus, and she’ll invoke his suffering every chance she gets to boost her own status.
Make no mistake, I think Barack Obama knew the importance of not calling a speech on account of the rain. If we’ve learned anything about George W. Bush, who is the furthest thing from a hero any of us know, it is the advantage of heroic looking photo ops. Obama will have a lot to live up to when he becomes President. Especially now. But if he does, I’m betting that those rain drenched pictures become media favorites.
The thing that a lot of Republicans feel proud about is their supposed pragmatism. And “putting country before party” has been a big winner at McCain rallies. But what does that mean, given Obama’s much better grasp of the issues facing America? The McCain campaign has as much as admitted defeat on the issues, spending the last couple of weeks flailing around for any mud they can find to fling at the Democratic ticket. It’s refreshing to know that there are still a few of those truly pragmatic Republicans around. You can find them at the Republicans for Obama site.
As for the Republicans who have decided to stick with the McCain ticket? Hopefully there weren’t too many who pinned their hopes on Ashley Todd, a woman who figured she’d prove that Obama would be a horrible president by pretending to be robbed and beaten by a fictional African American Obama supporter.
I’m still not sure exactly what it is about country and western music that makes me want to puncture my own eardrums every time they’re assaulted by it. Perhaps one of the reasons is the boastful ignorance that some of its mascots, such as Hank Williams Jr., display in songs like “McCain – Palin Tradition”:
Here’s an interesting analysis of his lyrics by Chris Rasmussen at The Pitch, Kansas City.
The part I found most interesting, however, was the accusation that Bill Clinton was to blame for the current economic crisis. Now, just using some pretty straight forward reasoning, you’d wonder how anything that was put into policy eight years ago would be able to turn into such an economic snowball without George Bush and his cronies noticing. Yes, Dubyah did look pretty surprised when he made his announcement that there was suddenly a crisis and that there would need to be a bailout… but come on! That said, I haven’t yet heard of a President that didn’t make mistakes, so perhaps Hank’s hyperbole had some basis in reality? I liked this analysis, which seems pretty balanced. It recognizes some policy decisions made by Clinton that made the conditions for the crisis possible. But it also recognizes the abuse of those policies over the last 8 years that made these problems what they are today.
It’s a classic right wing argument, the same sort of argument that would blame school shootings on Marylin Manson albums. There’s no question that you can find dark and violent themes in Manson’s music (he would argue, of course, that this is simply a reflection of our violent age), but when do the parents, the schools, and various members of society that were involved in a misguided kid’s life start sharing some of the responsibility for how he was raised? Perhaps Manson himself put it best: “Raise your kids better or I’ll be raising them for you.”
Verdict? Williams’ lyrics are trite and have only a tiny foothold on reality, but we’ll likely be hearing them quoted by die-hard right wingers with the same fervor as they quote passages from the Old Testament for at least another couple of weeks.
Presidential debates would certainly be more entertaining if they followed this format, though I have my doubts that John McCain or Sarah Palin have anything close to these moves…
I always knew The Penguin was a Republican…
Click here to see JibJab’s “Time for Some Campaignin’” e-card, featuring all your favorites, minus the VP candidates.
John McCain announced today that he loves being the underdog and, “My friends, we’ve got ‘em just where we want ‘em!” And, you know, this sounds like a pretty authentic statement from a guy who thought the U.S. could have won in Vietnam if they’d just stayed a little longer and who doesn’t believe in a time-line for withdrawal from Iraq. With McCain appearing (finally) on David Letterman and Sarah Palin making her debut on Saturday Night Live, it looks like it’s all style over substance from here on in, which is sort of funny when you remember that this is an accusation normally made against Barack Obama. It’s hard not to feel a bit sorry for John McCain. It’s like watching your own grandpa make a fool out of himself on prime time TV. You’d like to coax him out of the spotlight somehow. “Grandpa, it’s time for your nap.” But it’s no use. The Republican machine has been brought up to full steam, and it will not even consider the possibility of failure, even if that would mean saving the poor old man some dignity.
As Rolling Stone’s Make Believe Maverick article points out, McCain’s sources of dignity may indeed be fictional. Among the many insights into his history, we find that McCain “had a knack for stalling out his planes in midflight” and that it was only his family’s influence that allowed him to fly long enough to be shot down over North Vietnam. Sort of makes the whole POW story a little less compelling, doesn’t it? Now, I’m not sure I trust that Rolling Stone is composed of top notch investigative journalists, but the story does raise a lot of interesting questions about the real John McCain – and he wanted this campaign to be about character, right?
Alas, Colin Powell made sure to deliver another blow to everyone’s favorite underdog today by publicly endorsing Obama.
I like Powell. I’m still surprised that he sticks by the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq and is a member of the Republican Party, given that he’s always seemed to be much more diplomatic and responsible than that, but in my mind he makes up for it by giving great props to the guy who will be the next President so long as rational folks can outnumber the idiots at the voting stations.
Check out Jed Lewison’s post about John McCain urging the Bush administration to simply skip the Congressional approval on the infamous bailout bill. Not sure what I think about the bill itself, as there are a lot of interesting questions being raised now as to how necessary it actually is, but it’s definitely scary for a presidential candidate to be advocating the skipping of processes designed to protect ordinary people. This bailout would only be as good as the controls put on it to avoid more irresponsibility on Wall Street with tax payers’ money, so to skip this process is in my mind pretty foolhardy, no matter how important the bailout may seem.