Uncle John Shows Up

I fortified myself with vodka and tuned in C-Span to watch the first McCain-Obama debate. John McCain showed up, imagine that, but he looked stiff and constipated; Obama looked presidential but once the debate got underway he missed a number of opportunities to thump McCain. McCain tried to emphasize his experience by dropping names and recounting how he had tramped the terrain of Afghanistan (with Alexander the Great, perhaps), and therefore knew in his bones how a war there should be fought. McCain claimed that the US is on the way to Victory (McCain loves the word) in Iraq, though very few Americans know what victory in Iraq might actually look like. Perhaps we should ask the suffering Iraqis what an American victory would look like to them. I have the feeling that a total withdrawal of all foreign troops would figure prominently in Iraqi thinking.

At times Friday night McCain reminded me of the old uncle who gets invited to Thanksgiving dinner out of pity, is placed in a corner of the den with a TV tray and the remote control, and is ignored while the rest of the family tries to enjoy turkey with all the trimmings. Only in McCain’s case he won’t be ignored. “Let me tell you,” he says over and over before launching into a ramble that no one can follow.

On the economy, McCain was clearly out of his depth. He reiterated his empty claim that he believes in and supports the American worker, but of course his actions over the past eight years – and let’s not forgot, as McCain conveniently has, that for six of those years, the Republicans, McCain’s party, had total control of the government – make a mockery of the claim. McCain aided and abetted the Titans of Finance who plundered and profited before the house of cards collapsed. American workers have been hurting for a long time; odd how McCain only now notices.

It was particularly infuriating to hear McCain talk about cutting “runaway” spending. First of all, the misbegotten Invasion and Occupation of Iraq is the primary example of a Republican Administration drunk on spending; the cost of this misadventure is climbing towards the trillion dollar mark, and yet McCain’s Jockey briefs get wadded up about congressional “earmarks.” Give us a break, John. Your party is the culprit here. Two wars – one of them completely unnecessary – a financial system built upon greed and fraud, a decimated manufacturing base, budget and trade deficits, ceaseless borrowing from foreign banks to cover our economic weakness, absurd tax policies -- the list goes on and it has all come to a head courtesy of McCain’s Republican Party.

Pork barrel spending is the least of our fiscal problems.

Don’t get the impression that I was bowled over by Senator Obama because I wasn’t. Obama missed numerous opportunities to hammer McCain, and the senator’s assertion that we can rely on nuclear power and clean coal technology was simply political silliness. Given our current financial mess, the United States cannot afford to build more nuclear power plants, and even if we could, we shouldn’t.

But at least Obama had facts at his command and an understanding that the country has entered a new era. Neither candidate will admit it, and McCain is too old and nostalgic to recognize it anyway, but the United States is no longer the baddest bully on the playground; we exhibit classic symptoms of a decrepit empire. Thankfully, Obama has a sense of this and perhaps the intelligence and political skill to do something about it.

Watching McCain ramble through his talking points brought to mind Sarah Palin’s disastrous interview with Katie Couric on CBS. If you missed that, it’s definitely worth a look. Palin is a train wreck, a small town mayor trying desperately to play on the big stage and failing miserably. Palin is so inept that she makes Spiro Agnew and Dan Quayle look competent.