Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

This morning's faux mini-scandals, as outrageous as they might be, are just further evidence that McCain has essentially abdicated all control over his own campaign, and handed the candidacy over to Rove, Bush and the hard right. The Republicans never really wanted McCain as their candidate, and now he's allowed them to substitute Governor Palin in his place.

I think it's time that we start asking why McCain, whose entire life and career is based on the honorable way he endured his POW experience, has allowed the Bush administration and now his own campaign to behave so dishonorably. Where is the McCain of 2000? Why is he hiding behind Rovian politics? Why is he hiding behind the skirts of Governor Palin? Why has he allowed himself to be usurped by the hockey mom, when clearly his preference was for Lieberman or some other more sober candidate.

For all intents and purposes, McCain is now just a figure head in a campaign to reentrench the positions of the Bushies, the neocons, and the hard right.

His campaign is a disgrace. Built brick by brick on lies, smears, misrepresentations, and false cries of victimization. He has dishonored himself by not condemning these practices, and he has dishonored the country by selling it out to those same Republicans who for the last eight years have shown no regard for truth, justice, or the law. By putting country first, whatever that means, he has only opened the door to those same interests that send men to war and put their own interests above all else.

McCain is now a tragic figure: pathetic as an individual and terrifying as a harbinger of the next four years.

Lipstick

Juan Cole on the McCain/Palin theocratic platform:

John McCain announced that he was running for president to confront the "transcendent challenge" of the 21st century, "radical Islamic extremism," contrasting it with "stability, tolerance and democracy." But the values of his handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers. On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.

Zing!

Now that McCain has unleashed the Christianist base, one wonders what role he thinks he'll play in a Palin/Dobson administration. Maverick czar?

McCain's Acceptance Speech Negates Itself

In the end, all McCain has is his story. It was funereal and elegiac at best, but otherwise left unanswered all questions regarding how he'd govern or what's next for the country. It was all about looking back to the past.

McCain's speech concluded with a recitation of his war experience which he wove beautifully into a narrative of spiritual growth. He spoke not as someone embarking on a journey, but as someone whose journey had come to an end. His revelation that he cannot stand alone, that he cannot be the smirking, carefree maverick he was, that he is part of something larger than himself is both a perfect summation of the spiritual wounds of the Vietnam as well as a gentle step away from his own candidacy. His story tells us that his candidacy has been one more step in a journey to resolve the pain of the past, one shared by many veterans, and transform once and for all into the future tense of joy. Like an Ahab, the veteran is someone who no matter where he goes or what he does cannot accept the pain inflicted on him and his fellows by the whale of war. The last 40 years of American politics has been an acting out of that struggle without healing and without resolution. McCain spoke tonight as someone who had found resolution through his career of service, and while he cannot be the one to lead them, offers it as a path to his fellow Republicans and Conservatives.

For McCain to carry forward as the presidential candidate, or, even as president will be to continually revisit the pain of the past, and continually reenact the damage of those wounds in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iran, in Georgia, just as any wounded soul returns to the familiarity of his own fall from grace.

For Palin to step up as his running mate will be to continually re-fight the culture wars of the 80s and 90s.

The Republicans are a party and a people doomed by the past, to repeat it and reenact it. There is no hope for change, or resolution in the heart of someone who cannot see that his own story has come to an end. McCain has had his say. He's told his story, and offered nothing in the way of a future. He should now step aside and make way for the next generation, and for Barack Obama.

The Cream Puff, Appendix

McCain thinks it's unseemly to visit foreign countries during a political campaign. Yet wasn't that he in Colombia just recently when the hostages were freed? Yeah, I thought so.

The Cream Puff

The only thing worse than McCain's smears against Obama as un-American and un-Patriotic is the number of people who will agree with him. McCain has no substance, no character, no policies, and yet he can go to Schmidt's, have a cream-puff, and somehow thinks he stands on equal footing with Obama. His bleachy whiteness shines through.

Obama on the other hand goes to Germany and gets 200,000 people to cheer for an America without Bush, and renews the romance that the U.S. has carried on with the rest of the world since World War II. Hopes, dreams. It's not everything but it's a start.

And what kind of signal will it send to the world if we allow those taint-tightening reactionary forces of the Bush era elect the cream puff. How deep is the despair of all these so-called more-patriotic dead-enders that they should be allowed to make all of our aspirations seem so futile?

For the record, Barack's speech yesterday was amazing. And as a footnote to a footnote, I used to live in Columbus and Schmidt's is like the McDonald's of German food.