Diary of a Mad Editor

Conventional wisdom in the last week has been that Senator John McCain had to knock Barack Obama out in the second debate to stop the bleeding in public opinion against him and running in favor of Obama. Sorry to say, my friends, that McCain couldn’t manage it in this second debate anymore than in the first.

How does a candidate, who belongs to the incumbant party — a party whose leader is generally acknowledged by most people in this, or any other country, to be the worst president in U.S. history, a candidate who made a calculated decision over the last eight years to link himself to that president and this administration’s policies make the argument that he’s the guy most likely to correct the course of the last eight years? The answer: Put on a sideshow. Attack his opponent’s character. Lie about the man’s record. Try to rekindle the fond memories in the voters minds of the man you were back in 2000 when people still believed you to be a reasonable, decent guy. The problem is two-fold for McCain: You cannot seperate yourself from the failures of the last eight years if you are embracing policies that are more or less the same as the last eight years. Second, it’s really hard to call into question another man’s character without shining a light on your own.

At the onset of the debate it seemed like McCain might be able to win by attacking Obama’s record. In the early part of the debate, Obama wasn’t putting up much of a fight — he was just letting McCain ramble. By the time the questions turned more solidly toward the economy, it became clear that Obama was just waiting for McCain to trap himself in his own confusion. McCain couldn’t impune Obama’s judgement and character, hard as he tried. The more McCain attacked, the more erratic he looked. He moved around the stage like a rampaging mummy. The pre-screened voters assembled for this fake town hall debate seemed at times to be bored with McCain and at other times annoyed with him. There was even an awkward moment near the end of the debate where McCain tried to have one of those “brothers-in-arms” moments with an ex-Navy man that seemed forced and in which the ex-Navy man seemed to react to with a kind of pity for the out-of-touch McCain. But really, where McCain lost this debate was when he talked about health care and entitlements. He couldn’t or wouldn’t defend Obama’s charge that McCain’s health plan is essentially a health tax that would ultimately throw even more people onto the rolls of the uninsured rather than address the problem. And his populist rhetoric didn’t exactly quell fears that he wants to privatize Medicare. He paid lip-service to energy and environmental issue and came across as a die-hard war hawk in the foreign policy segment. Obama scored big in his own answers on the domestic questions and landed a pretty solid hit on McCain on foreign policy judgement, pointing out McCain’s brash, over-the-top past statements and positions in response to McCain’s attempt to define Obama’s bona fides on foreign policy. The mantra of “Bomb, Bomb . . . Bomb, Bomb Iran” will haunt McCain for the rest of his days, I’d venture, and it’s not because people don’t understand that he was joking when he said it during the primary season — it’s because McCain thinks that the use of military force is something one can joke about. This is a guy who has repeatedly said he doesn’t like war, yet is positively cavalier about using military force like a blunt instrument. That speaks rather poorly of his judgement.

A month ago, I couldn’t honestly say who would win this election but, I just don’t see where McCain has to go now. Undecided voters are making up their minds and it seems like most of them are starting to set their minds on Obama. Obama has passed the “Commander-in-Chief” test, so McCain can’t really use the experience argument (people are no longer buying it, and it didn’t work for Hillary Clinton when she tried to make it). The trivial business of Obama’s past associations has been vetted in the public arena — months ago! The public is too impatient and disgusted to even listen to that garbage for the most part, so McCain and Palin can’t really bring those matters up without their own skeletons being dragged out of the closet, and that stuff really hasn’t been discussed that much. In fact, I can almost guarantee when Palin starts up with that “He’s a terrorist” line in Pennsylvania today, it will not play all that well with anyone but the most diehard republicans already in McCain’s camp. Whereas, many of the common “folks” in PA may be a bit more conservative on those social issues like “guns and religion,” outright, juvenile attacks won’t jive with that Quaker sensibility. What Palin will most likely achieve is to clinch that battleground state for Obama.

John McCain should have understood at the outset that this is not an election about social issues and phony flag-waving, jingoistic bullshit like 2004 was. This is an election about the economy and about the future. McCain represents the past. Past decade. Past century. Past his prime.

Barring some catastrophe that suddenly, miraculously makes McCain relevant again, you can get your forks ready for the barbecue, because this pig is just about done.