AT A LOSS

A couple of weeks ago I began writing something I’ve been meaning to write for a long time regarding my conclusions on the war in Iraq. I mention this to relieve my own guilt that I have not posted in so long.

I still plan to write that piece. It’s just that while in the midst of writing, Barack Obama made his comments about “refining” his statements on Iraq. My concern is that the piece I was writing would read like an apology for Obama rather than as the view I had come to all on my own.

The truth is that I am confused about what to write at the present time, yet I feel compelled to write something If for no other reason than to get back in the habit.

I had become so tired of commenting on the campaign tactics used during the primary season and I had looked forward to writing about the real issues—well at least some of the real issues.
Regardless of what I had written about my experience in 1988, I had actually begun to have a little hope that this campaign might be more substantive than that one. Instead, it is 1988 in hyperdrive.

Back in November of last year I had come to the conclusion that the only hope for this country to regain some sanity was to have Barack Obama and John McCain be the candidates for the two major parties. For one, the intelligence of his rhetoric, for the other, the strength of his character, I had believed would be enough to overcome the entrenched slime machines of their respective parties. This has not been the case.

Possibly the most heartbreaking moment came when I watched McCain’s most recent interview on “This Week”. He spent roughly two thirds of the interview putting forth a practiced but poorly executed sneer and chuckle as a preface to every—and I mean every—statement he made regarding Obama. He then dropped the forced condescension and spent the final third of the segment talking about his qualifications and maintaining that he was the candidate with a history of “reaching across the aisle”. I would have believed him and even though I still disagreed with his policies and would not have voted for him, I would still have felt comfortable with the thought of him being my president had it not been for those first two thirds.

In the weeks since, he and his minions have continued to belittle the accomplishments of Barack Obama and he has recently embraced the tactics of completely lying about things that Obama and his supporters have said.

Admittedly this is far from the best thing I’ve written on this blog so it is best that I just get to my point: I had looked forward to at most liking and at least having respect for the Republican candidate in this go round. All of that is gone. John McCain is nothing but a sad shell of what I thought he was. Indeed the signs have been there for at least four years that he didn’t really have the integrity he claimed to have. He had a chance to truly serve his country, as he had done in his youth, four years ago when his friend, John Kerry, ran against the guy who attempted to destroy him on a personal level. I’m not saying McCain should have been Kerry’s running mate or agreed to serve in his cabinet, even though that would have been an amazingly heroic thing to do. But at the very least, he could have stood up for Kerry when the same machine that wrecked his gravitas began to do the same thing to the Democratic nominee.

But no.

John McCain showed then and there and in every moment since that his country and the people of it are not his priority. His priority is his decrepit party and winning at all costs.

I have heard him claim that he is just exhibiting a sense of humor and I guess he is. It’s the same sense of humor exhibited by little boys who pull legs off of grasshoppers or older boys who shake their heads and smile slyly at a racial joke.

Sadly, it looks like these tactics may win him the White House.

What a pity.

J.A.L.