You Gotta Like that McCain Style

Let’s project about six months down the road, and let’s sadly assume for the purpose of this discussion that the McCain ticket is elected. I would like to explore the decision-making ability and judgment of McCain as he begins to tackle the issues, both domestic and international, that will immediately bombard him from day one as president. In the past couple of weeks, we had the conflict between Russia and the Country of Georgia, and even today, we have North Korea announcing that they’ll begin the process of rebuilding their nuclear infrastructure for the purpose of demonstrating to the US that they don’t like US policy and the fact that the US still considers them an evil empire.

Witnessing John McCain recently speaking out against Russia’s aggression toward Georgia and hearing his bluster, his attempt to immediately turn this back into a Cold War climate and to completely blow this skirmish totally out of proportion both scared me and reminded me that he is not the kind of reasonable, thoughtful and informed leader that I’m looking for to lead my country into the next presidency. And now hearing that McCain’s vetting team had barely spoken with Sarah Palin, only speaking to her the day before McCain offered her the vice-presidency, and knowing that McCain only had one five-minute exposure to Palin months ago before this past Friday is something that would not even be believable in a political movie, much less the real life that we live in.

If you then add Palin’s tremendous lack of experience with a thoroughly blank slate when it comes to foreign policy and recognize that John McCain is of advancing age, we have an even bigger problem. Her position on social issues is nothing short of scary, and hearing every Republican elected official and pundit rallying behind her stating Palin has more experience than Obama and Biden combined is just laughable. When reminded that that same criteria would also apply to John McCain, Rudy Giuliani actually stated that oh no, John McCain commanded his military squadron. Under this scenario, every CEO, president of a company or Boy Scoutmaster who has been involved in any kind of local community issues or political activity would be qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

On the other hand, it has been incredibly entertaining, although a bit frustrating, watching Republican spokespeople lining up to sing the praises of Palin and all but ignore or excuse McCain’s lack of judgment or shoot-from-the-hip and potentially ill-advised choice of Palin. Although the attacks on Obama regarding his lack of experience, no matter how specious, had been scoring some points in certain parts of this country, McCain has all but eliminated that argument from having any weight because Sarah Palin is the poster child for people lacking experience and national political credentials, despite what we’re currently hearing on TV and radio.

Mike Barnicle of Boston newspapers and MSNBC had a great line. He said that three years ago, Sarah Palin was the person you’d go to for an ice fishing permit. The apparent fight that she had against oil companies in Alaska was not whether or not drilling should take place, but how much money should go to the state from the obscene profits that are generated by oil companies. If you add in the fact that this woman and her family are currently undergoing a crisis with a pregnant teenager and her political office is in the middle of a corruption investigation that gets more complex and sticky as we get more knowledge of her biography and history, it is just possible that picking almost anyone else would have been more advisable for McCain and the Republican Party. If all of the above isn’t enough, I just heard that Ms. Palin has reportedly tried to ban books from her local library according to Time Magazine.

John McCain has already said in one speech that there will be more wars in the near future. He said he didn’t think that we’d have any problems with his leaving troops in Iraq for 100 years. He has admitted that the economy is not his strong suit and has gone out to prove it. He has consistently and repeatedly made errors in judgment, made incorrect references to world leaders, countries and the players within, and truth be told, he has demonstrated numerous times that he is out of touch with the lives of ordinary American people, not being familiar with the internet and certainly pretending not to know how many homes he owns. Adding Sarah Palin to the ticket is not just an insult, it is just frightening. As I heard Chris Matthews say this morning, the last person that McCain would go to for advice among his cabinet and his cronies would be Sarah Palin, and yet it is Palin who will become our president if something happens to John McCain.