It's lonely being McCain
Poor John McCain. There is Obama running around the Middle East and soon western Europe and Mac can't seem to get any media traction at all.
Friends from the Manchester Union newspaper report the scene late Monday night as the Republican nominee touched down in New Hampshire for a quick campaign visit. Waiting on the tarmac as he stepped out from his gleaming campaign 737 plane: precisely one reporter and one photographer. And they were unkind enough to mention that McCain, due to turn 72 in August, was limping as he came down the steps. (Hopefully aides avoided showing him the latest New Hampshire polls which have him losing the state to Obama, albeit by a small margin.)
The debate in camp McCain today is should they just sit tight and wait for Obama to come home and hopefully relinquish some of the media time back to them or is there a way to grab it back before then, specifically by announcing his choice for running mate? Watch this space, because McCain tomorrow night will be in New Orleans meeting with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and rumours abound that he may announce him as the Veep choice on Thursday, the day Obama will be speaking in Berlin. No question, it would steal some of the bang from Barack's address.
For once, I have little, if any personal, investment in the US campaign, having moved over here from the US a few years back. But I just can't feel any sympathy for McCain due to his advance age and obvious lack of "charisma", as I believe him to be only a slightly smarter Bush.
The economy inherited by either or McCain or Obama isn't going to be any different; it'll be just a continuation of the same policies designed to keep a few people wealthy while the rest of us struggle to pay the bills on wages that have less real economic power with each passing year. Remember that Bush inherited the economy from Clinton, designed on essentially a series of political hedges giving the false impression of a rising economy when, in reality, it was already in real trouble (more than shades of Enron and other companies that since either gone bust or have been bought out by other companies). We are reaping the result of the last thirty years of policies begun in the 1970's when the gold standard was scrapped and the long era of deregulation and weakening of workers' bargaining powers began. The president won't fix the economy because he all but has a mandate not do so, as he would lose all of his support from what Eisenhower called the military industrial complex.
Posted by: CM Concepcion | 23 July 2008 at 01:02 PM
Poor John, indeed. The rather pathetic sight of John McCain limping along on the campaign trail is rather like watching an over-the-hill Boy Scout who has lost his way: he just can't remember his political "woodcraft" so cannot read the "signs", all of which virtually shout out "Not this way". Sadder still is the, albeit unverifiable, truth that his party has handed him the nomination because they know that they just cannot win, tainted as they are by the slow motion train wreck that is the Bush presidency. The GOP is going to lose, big, and they know it. Alas, McCain simply hasn't figured out that his fellow Republicans are not going to squander what little political capital they have by running a half-way viable candidate against Obama. Better to pacify John and his supporters - such as they are - let him run himself into the ground, and have the party live to fight another year. And who knows, the GOP elders may be right. If Obama screws up as president (and he might if he can't quickly deal with two foreign wars and an economy in melt-down), then the GOP can crow "We told you so" and win back the hearts of the American people. It's not as crazy as it sounds!
Posted by: Noel McCarthy | 22 July 2008 at 08:16 PM