...It Was the Worst of Times

Senator McCain’s biography has been the stuff of legend. In fact, he wrote in one of his many books that his POW stay gave him a story to sell to the American public. But his campaign managers and advisers cannot seem to explain why the patriotic and tough McCain would be good for America.

They thought they were going to run a campaign on the importance of experience, particularly in international affairs. They were going to stick to the success of the surge (a highly disputed fact)in Iraq and portray McCain as the sure-handed and clear-minded patriot. They assumed that this would appease independent voters, so they tried to unite the GOP base behind McCain (a faction that is not excited about his candidacy) and acquire some disenchanted Hillary Clinton supporters by choosing a female governor with ultra-conservative values to be his running mate.

Two weeks after the Republican National Convention, this seemed to be a winning strategy, but the recent financial crisis unraveled that entire line of campaigning and caused Senator McCain to trash his own legacy in a desperate attempt to get elected. After being passed over so many times in the past for the one position that would make him more revered than his grandfather and his father, McCain absolutely refuses to let the dream die. He will not go down easily. He is still out on the campaign trail doing everything he can think of to claim victory. Some national polls even show him closing the gap on Senator Obama.

All of this is amid rumor and innuendo that his campaign is spiraling out of control. Governor Palin's aides insist that she is doing her own thing now because she feels that the McCain campaign did not handle her introduction to the nation properly and McCain aides claim that she is a know-nothing that will not listen to anybody. McCain and his staff continue to say that she was properly vetted, but it seems unlikely since she constantly stumbles on the most basic of talking points during interviews (she still doesn't know what the vice president does and she could not tell Brian Williams what a precondition was) and she is known to cast her most trusted allies under the bus for a chance at their job (ask the former mayor of Wasilla and the city councilman who recruited Palin into politics).

The old adage is to judge the candidate on how he runs his campaign and who he selects for vice president because those are the first executive decisions he makes. If these are the type of decisions he makes and he wins, we are fucked!