Well, it turns out for now at least, that I was wrong in my last commentary. It is not Gov. Palin that will withdraw from the race – it was Sen. McCain who announced his withdrawal last night during his acceptance speech.
During a boring, lackluster attempt to paint himself the “real agent of change”, McCain made it painfully clear that he has no intention of leading either his party nor the nation if elected. That job has been handed back over to Palin and the same purveyors of hate and division that have run this nation into the ground the past 8 years.
Leaving aside all the obvious deficiencies and controversies swirling around Palin like so many vultures waiting for her candidacy to implode, she enervates the right wing and especially those who admire her stand to have her god run the country. This self-described “barracuda” is just what the dying McCain campaign needed to give it some life. She can spew hatred in a way McCain just is not able to do. Give him credit, he really believes in bridging the partisan divide. Too bad he ceded the power to those who criticize community service and advocate yet more power to an already overblown executive branch.
McCain, who has supported all but a miniscule portion of the Bush-Cheney juggernaut, of course tells us the only way to change the downward spiral of the nation is to elect him to do more of the same. The growing doubt that he is mentally and physically capable of serving effectively as President surely were put to rest in his acceptance speech – we now know he cannot.
McCain is not only too old physically, his ideas were worn out years ago and only kept alive by the greatest propaganda machine since Joseph Goebbels. The odds are that he will not survive even four years if elected which means this election is really about a Palin presidency.
The GOP wants us to engage in a debate about her lack of experience so they can try to salvage the attack on Sen. Obama’s credentials. Palin, we are told, had to make “real decisions” and manage one of the smallest state governments in America. But it isn’t management experience that we look for in a Presidential candidate, it is experience in dealing with the major issues of the day. Obama has in his brief term in the Senate dealt with more of the nation’s problems than Palin has even heard about. Our nation is deep in debt – both the government and the people are awash in red ink. Palin’s state has faced none of these problems because of the oil tax revenues generated by high gas prices.
Obama has had to wrestle with how to deal with our misadventure in Iraq, the failure impending in Afghanistan and a host of international issues and problems. Palin has no knowledge, experience and clearly not the temperament to deal with any of them.
Which leads me to a final note. It is fairly common these days for a presidential candidate to take the high road while the vice presidential candidate swings from the heels and is the attack dog. Palin is an excellent choice for that role. She proved on Wednesday night that she can hit below the belt, falsify facts and slander the opposition in ways McCain could probably never do.
But in McCain we already have a man with a temperament that is often explosive, impulsive, and stubborn. Where is the word of caution, the balance to his acting on gut instinct going to come from? Certainly not from an ideologue such as Palin. She has proven in her short stint as mayor of tiny village and as governor that she can be as impulsive as her running mate and without any sugar coating to boot.
This may be the change McCain proposes – damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead to a Palin presidency.
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