Is John McCain Really Fading?

The mere fact that John McCain has made it close thus far in the presidential campaign is a testament to one of two things: he is running an amazing campaign or the American public is easily duped and refuses to come to grips with reality. Given the McCain campaign's repeated lies and just straight-up horrible decision-making, I am leaning toward the latter of the two options to explain McCain's viability.

I'm not going to sit here and rehash everything I have blogged about in the past few months about the man and his campaign, but there are some key themes that have been repeated throughout and they are starting to come to a head as McCain's gamble with "suspending" his campaign in order to work on a bailout does not seem to be paying off.

To begin with, McCain has constantly cited his ability to work with both sides of the aisle, so to speak. He claims to have the wisdom and know-how to work with both parties to get important things done. The fact that the House did not pass the bailout plan on Monday shows McCain's inability to do just that. By making a huge deal of "suspending" his campaign to work on the bailout, he essentially made himself the face of it. Thus, when it failed, it is natural that a lot of the blame fall on the man claiming to be running around Washington working behind the scenes.

When it failed, what did McCain do? He blamed Barack Obama and the Democrats in classic Washingtonian partisanship: "Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process. Now is not the time to fix the blame; it is time to fix the problem." So, after blaming Obama and the Democrats, McCain said now is not the time to fix the blame. To be frank, the House Republicans are the ones who essentially told their leaders to piss off and voted against the bailout. Before McCain can say that he reaches across party lines and gets things done, he might want to start with his own party.

But it simply would not be a John McCain moment if he did not contradict himself or his campaign. You see, shortly before McCain went and blamed Obama for being too involved in the entire process and ruining everything, McCain's top economic adviser, Doug Holtz-Eakin, was saying that Obama had "phoned it in," when it came to getting stuff done on Capitol Hill. So on the one hand, Obama did not do enough over the weekend to help get the bailout passed, but at the same time he did too much and ruined it all. You would think they would muzzle Holtz-Eakin after his BlackBerry comment.

Then comes McCain's "gotcha-journalism" moment with Katie Couric, when he blamed the mainstream media for his running mate's lack of general knowledge of foreign affairs:

In reality, the "gotcha" quote (which is not a pizza place, by the way - what was up with that?) was from a voter, not the media. Couric was simply repeating the sentiments of a voter (something the media does not do that often). McCain hiding behind the thin veil of "the evil media out to get me" is similar to the false cries of sexism put up by the McCain campaign when Palin's credentials were questioned. Additionally, McCain's awkward (and nonsensical) jokes and his confrontational manner with Couric are not exactly ways to get swing voters.

This brings up Sarah Palin: as conservative columnists and writers begin to trip over themselves to say how horrible a pick she was, she begins to prove to everyone how inept she is. The beginning and the end of it is this: she believes dinosaurs and humans cohabited around 6,000 years ago. If one seriously and honestly believes something like that, then they should not be holding an office as important as vice-president. But people somehow looked beyond that.

So she was told to do an interview (I am utterly convinced that she makes no decisions for herself and is at the mercy of McCain's handlers 110%) with Couric. She embarrassingly stumbled through a question that she had been asked before by Charles Gibson. This was the second time she got to answer the same question and she somehow sounded even more moronic than the first time:

It's painful to watch - yet hilarious at the same time. Some follow up questions: how often does Putin invade American air space? I can't imagine we let him fly a MiG anywhere he wants to. What are "those" things that we are sending out to "keep an eye" on the Russians? Are they sent by the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, or by some governor of a tiny state who cannot even grasp the science behind the impossibility of dinosaurs and humans living together? The scariest thing: that person could be one in the same if people do not wake up.

Of course the next installment of Couric interviews did not help Palin much, either. When asked what news sources she reads and how it has shaped her world view, she went off into a ditty about her respect for the media, blah blah. When pressed not once, but twice, on which specific publications she reads, she paused and said, "All of them." This brought back memories of the box-office classic Office Space in which Michael Bolton is pressed on which of his namesake's songs he likes the best:

Having lied about liking Bolton, he stumbles and says "All of them." So the fictional Michael Bolton and the real Sarah Palin share a common ground here: they are both full of it. This is not the end of embarrassing moments for Palin before Thursday's debate, either. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz says that there are a few more buzzworthy clips of Palin expected to run in the next day or two in which Palin continues to make an ass of herself.

So where are we? With a little over a month before Election Day, Obama's lead is beginning to widen, but the fact that it has been this close thus far is a telling sign. McCain could come out with a smear or some mere bullshit ads to boost his own poll numbers or, at the very least, stop Obama's from rising. It will be interesting to see what happens on Thursday, because while I feel that Biden could mop the floor with Palin, I also think that the media and the pundits are putting way too much stake into Thursday night and if Biden does not have a perfect debate he will catch a lot of flack for it. Peace.

Photos - John McCain announcing the suspension of his campaign to work on bailout issues (The Guardian)

McCain Not Ready for the Bigtime: Wants First Presidential Debate Delayed

Using the cover of the current economic crisis that he has finally come to admit, McCain has asked that the presidential debate originally scheduled for Friday September 26th be postponed to a later date. He claims that his and Obama's time would be better spent in Washington helping negotiate the bailout deal, despite the fact that neither one of them sits on the Senate Banking Committee, which is the committee that is most familiar with the institutions covered by the proposed bailout and is leading the bailout talks. This brings up many issues.

It's clear what McCain is trying to do: he is attempting to make it look like he is taking the moral high road. Having exhausted his "I am willing to lose an election to win a war" bit, he is now turning to "You, my friends, are what's most important to me right now, not a silly debate." He is trying to make it look like Obama is so power-hungry that he doesn't even want to go to Washington (with all of the "insiders" that both camps keep demeaning) to work out a bailout deal to make sure that the Wall Street banks are not responsible for their actions. In reality, he is trying to gain political points by making it seem like he is not trying to gain political points.

Personally, I do not want McCain debating about the bailout plan. He clearly does not know what he is doing. Just last week he was saying that the fundamentals of our economy were strong. His head economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, tried to say that the success of the BlackBerry was due to someone who doesn't even e-mail. McCain also tried to say that the Senate Commerce Committee, which he is a member of, oversees all portions of the nation's economy. In reality, the Commerce Committee handles mostly coastal, interstate, and transportational portions of the economy and has little, if anything, to do with Wall Street. Either he is lying about what his committee does or he simply does not know; either way, I don't want him bargaining on my behalf in Congress for this bailout.



I also find McCain's timing curious. He didn't want to stop campaigning in the months before this meltdown, he only wants to do it when he has a big debate coming up. That's like watching the leaves fall all autumn and instead of putting in a little work here and there to get the lawn cleaned up, you wait until the day your wife wants to go to her parents' house to come around to dealing with it. Besides, McCain has been in the Senate for 21 years, which includes the entire time that this subprime thing was building. Why didn't he hunker down and deal with it then? He's had plenty of time to try to prevent this the past couple of years and (assuming, as he does, that his participation in the bailout talks will be seen as the second coming for the Banking Committee and others) deal with this the past week or two. To be honest, McCain will be no godsend to these talks and his presence is hardly needed.

Obama's right when he says that McCain should join him at the debate. As he said, the people want to hear from the next president of the U.S. at the debates and two people with little economic experience missing from the bailout talks will not be the end of the world. I think that the real reason McCain wants to postpone the debate is that he is not where he wants to be in terms of his poll numbers or his debating skills and wants to work a bit on both before hitting the ring with Obama. Hell, he didn't know the Prime Minister of Spain when asked about it the other day; of course he's not ready for a debate on foreign policy. It's time McCain put on his big boy hat and put some substance behind his tough talk of Obama not being ready to lead and debate him one-on-one. Because there won't always be an American crisis to hide behind when you want to avoid something. Peace.

Photo - McCain (news.bbc.co.uk)

A Bad Week for McCain

As Wall Street implodes and the CEOs who ruined their companies walk away with millions, Obama and McCain are jockeying for position on the economy. Obama created a television ad almost two minutes long detailing his economic plan. McCain flip-flopped on the AIG issue (to nationalize or not to nationalize), spouted some populist rhetoric about "greed and corruption" on Wall Street, stated that his position on the Senate Commerce Committee gives him great experience because the committee "oversights every part of our economy," which it does not, and called for a 9/11 type commission to investigate what happened on Wall Street. Even in what is supposed to be his stronghold - foreign affairs - he showed ineptitude and tired grudges when he refused to say that he would meet with Spain's Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, (despite calling for improved Spanish-American relations back in April) and repeatedly talking about Latin America (not Spain) when Zapatero's name was repeatedly brought up by the interviewing reporter.

Additionally, reminiscent of Al Gore's infamous internet remark, McCain's top economic advisor, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, held up his BlackBerry to reporters, stating, "He did this. Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years - comes right through the Commerce Committee - so you're looking at the miracle John McCain helped create, and that's what he did." Nevermind that in the past McCain has said that while he uses a BlackBerry, he does not e-mail, saying "I've never felt the particular need to e-mail."

On top of ole' Dougie's gaffe comes senior McCain advisor Carly Fiorina's statement that Sarah Palin (who apparently is beginning to call it the Palin-McCain campaign, not McCain-Palin's campaign) would be unable to run a large corporation like Hewlett-Packard (the company that Fiorina herself ran until being forced out in 2005 with $21 million severance). In an attempt to correct herself several hours later, she stated that neither McCain, Obama, or Biden could run a corporation like HP. She followed this up later saying that McCain and Palin are "fast learners." I guess that is a bit counter-intuitive to the whole "experience" argument coming from the McCain camp, but hey, throw McCain in the Oval Office, he'll pick up the hang of it in a year or two - he's a fast learner, you know (he taught himself to ride a bike in a week - a week!). In all seriousness, it's expected that Fiorina would say that Obama or Biden could not run a major corporation, but you have to think twice when she says that her own boss could not do it.

All in all, not a great week for McCain. First he's against the nationalization of AIG (a Republican position), then he's for it (a Communist position) - a position similar to Bush's regarding bailing out private companies in the past few months. Second he appears to either a) continue to hold a grudge against Spain for not being complicit in the Iraq conflict or b) does not know that Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is the Prime Minister of Spain (despite constantly spouting his foreign affairs experience) and assumed that Zapatero was the leader of a Latino country because of his name. Then his top economic advisor attributes the flourishing of the BlackBerry to McCain (despite history telling us taking credit for something you did not do is dishonest and will bite you in the ass [see: Al Gore]) and one of his senior advisors says that neither he nor his running mate would be able to run a major corporation (she knows that the President is the head of the executive branch, right?). All of this begs the question - if McCain's position on AIG is eerily similar to that of the current president, he does not know who the Prime Minister of Spain is or simply holds a grudge against him because he went by the facts when Bush & Co. did not, and he cannot even keep his staffers under control when he brags that he can rein in Washington's lobbying and corruption, how is he going to run this country differently than the man at the helm the last eight years? Peace.

Photos - McCain at a rally in Jacksonville on September 15 (abcnews.go.com), Douglas Holtz-Eakin sans BlackBerry (money.cnn.com), Carly Fiorina (www3.babson.edu)