My cynical side compels me to state that I think it not at all unlikely that McCain will win the election. Why? Because We The People are generally unwilling to embrace reality. I suppose that’s one way of saying that Americans are stupid. Sorry, can’t help it.
Here is a New York Times piece detailing Governor Palin’s shortfalls. Partisanship aside, this is a model of a small-town mayor who believes in controlling “her town” with a iron fist. Unfortunately, she’s not in charge of a small town, she’s in charge of a state and she somehow doesn’t “get” that this kind of behavior is unethical. The media—at least in print—is doing its job, bringing this stuff to the general public.
Will the public respond rationally? Depending on which set of polls you look at, no. It’s not so much that anyone thinks this kind of person is somehow a good politician, although there are those who will read these charges, shrug and say “So?” It is that the charges will not be believed or they will be misunderstood. See, the New York Times is one of those Liberal rags.
But the allegations can be checked. These things are not hidden. Yet the perception will be that Palin is being unfairly put upon.
There are a number of good, sound reasons to reject the McCain-Palin ticket. There are a number of good, sound reasons to vote for Obama-Biden. None of those will, I think, be determining factors. The Republican’s Karl Rove Machine is back, running full-tilt-boogie, to turn this campaign into one of personalities, avoiding issues. American’s like tough, simple-minded grit, it seems, even when there is no substance to back it up. This is a sports nation, after all, and the intellectual doesn’t play tackle in the national psyche. It appeared for a time that Obama had a shot, that he had managed to keep the discourse on the issues, but that’s deteriorating in favor of the soundbite of personal combat. The Republicans have seized on the Lipstick comment like a drowning man to a life raft and are running with it as if Obama actually intended to insult Palin. (If he had intended to insult her, he could doubtless do so in terms so elevated that they wouldn’t know how to respond—cheap shots haven’t been his style thus far.)
But it’s not McCain or Palin who will be responsible for victory should they win. It will be the bone-deep fearful dull-witedness of the American voter who responds like a rabbit in mating season to personal attacks. Politics in America often devolve to cut fights and that’s the game McCain is playing now. We remember those as kids, don’t we? The one option you didn’t have was to just not play, because that automatically tagged you a wimp and a loser. It takes brains and maturity to realize that the game itself is worthless. I’m afraid I’m not sanguine about our collective brains and maturity.
