McCain’s Straight Talk Express Is Foundering in the Mud

The vows taken by Republican John McCain to take the high road in conducting this year's bid for the White House seem to have been cast aside along the way like empty beer bottles. It is sad to see such an honored warrior abandon his ideals. As a senator he did make a difference in cleaning up some aspects of politics in Washington.  But now, eight years later, his time is running out for him to be president. His talks do not inspire enthusiasm. Last spring and summer as the presidential campaign went on, the crowds of people who came to hear him speak, dwindled to embarrassing numbers when compared to those who came to hear the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama's new ideas. 

McCain had to do something, so he turned to the Rovian campaign dogs that were the authors of George W Bush's winning Swiftboat campaigns. Currently they are producing one political advertisement after another laced with lies and innuendoes to poison the judgement of voters.

Words, no matter how untrue, once they are spoken can't be taken back. You can't unring a bell. Some people still believe that Iraq was responsible for the attacks on 9/11 and will never understand, or accept the truth. Because President Bush and Vice President Cheney have said over and over that the Iraqis were responsible, some people still believe it must be true. After seven years of being told the true story that it was not the Iraqis but Saudi Arabian terrorists from the safe haven of Afghanistan who did it, a great many people won't believe. They don't understand that the Bush administration intended to get control of Iraqi oil. Since the United States has nothing to gain from Afghanistan, except to kill terrorists and those who backed them, the military campaign there has been failing, and the enemy is stronger than ever. But the Bush administration intends to keep concentrating on Iraq and leave the harder problem in Afghanistan for the next administration to solve.

Before the Republican convention this summer, McCain's political rallies were drawing dwindling crowds numbering in the hundreds, as opposed to those of Barack Obama who consistently drew crowds in the thousands. So, he and his advisors changed tactics. As they veered the bus off the main road to take a crooked course up a muddy trail, they pulled out all stops in order to win over the voters. Now it doesn't matter how farfetched or untrue the accusations they throw at Barack Obama, they keep coming up with more outrageous attacks, and John McCain keeps saying he approves them.

To help him, McCain has chosen a pretty woman, Sarah Palin, to be his running mate and his shill, a role she seems to be good at. She took the stage at the Republican convention like a rock star. There she stood in her high heels and short skirt. She is the Governor of the great state of Alaska, former mayor or her hometown, mother of five children, and wife of a blue- collar fisherman, oilfield worker and union member. She wowed ‘em. And she can make a great speech too. In fact she keeps making the same one, with its proven inaccuracies, ever since. She must be made of Teflon - nothing bad seems to stick to her. People believe what they want to believe, and they see her and her family as one of them. They include in her positive assets as vice presidential candidate the fact that she is a fundamentalist Christian who would teach Creationism in schools. She believes like Bush that God speaks to her. They love that she is a mother, she hold babies well, and for experience in foreign affairs, Russia is close to Alaska and she goes through Canada every time she visits the lower forty-eight.

The best thing about her for McCain is that, as long as Palin is on the campaign trail with him, large enthusiastic crowds of people keep coming to see and listen to them. They see Palin as one of them, one of the common people, ready to take over the presidency if McCain life span runs out before his term of office.

But we don't need a common man or woman as president. We need an uncommonly gifted, intelligent, and well-educated person with new, forward-looking ideas to compete in this increasingly globalized world. We need real change in the way business is conducted in Washington and the world, and we won't get it with an old hero, and a pretty mother who knows only how to parrot the party line.

It's sad that Obama's people feel they have to respond to McCain's untruths, but former Democrat candidates tried to ignore those tactics and lost. It's sad that the media sees fit to headline all the unsavory back and forth attacks and responses to scurrilous accusations. It's a sad commentary about American voters that so many read and believe the tabloid-like slander in the political ads being fed to us by McCain and his people. Obama tried to avoid such tactics for the most part, but it looks as if he may veer off the high road too, and the campaign is going to get rougher and tougher the closer we get to Election Day.

Do we really want or need a president who wins by being the best in a contest of mud slinging? It looks like that is what we are going to get.