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Friday, September 05, 2008

Now I Understand John McCain

...I think.

I think I understand why he repeatedly went against his party, why he has never let the right wing talk show hosts push him around and why, above all, he chose Sarah Palin.

Watch this from 42:30 on and I think you'll see it, too.


"Country first" is more than a slogan for John McCain. It's burned into the very core of his being. Whatever her limitations, there could not be a better VP candidate for him than Sarah Palin, a woman who may be his equal in courage, determination and patriotism, someone who relentlessly went after her state's corrupt political machine, a machine of her own party.

It would be the equivalent of Senator Obama having gone after the Daley machine in Chicago.

Saddling John McCain with the likes of Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty would never have worked. He had to have a poltical soulmate as his VP, someone who he knew would carry on his work if he died. Bobby Jindal, who is currently draining the swamps of corruption in Louisiana, would have been another good choice, but any of the traditional politicians trotted out as possible VP candidates would have stood in stark contrast to this unique man.

John McCain is in Washington, but not of it. As I heard his life story, I wondered what it must be like for him to sit on Senate panels and hear the backroom deals where the pork-barrel earmarks are planned and favors exchanged. For a man who gained a religious zealot's passion for his country while being tortured for 5 1/2 years in a foreign prison, these discussions must disgust him. How refreshingly alien to the culture of Washington he is!

He'd make a great president.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:56 AM

    Four words moved me beyond description. When he was talking about his mistreatment following his refusal of early release, he said:

    "And they broke me."

    His subsequent redemption is empirical evidence for the profound truth of the axiom "blessed are the poor in spirit".

    John McCain was blessed by his brokenness. As America will be, if we can manage to do the right thing.

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  2. I was impressed.

    So were the trolls-- they rolled level one gnomes named "Mccainsucks" and "Palinsucks" and embarrassed themselves in World of Warcraft....

    Oooh! I found out something new this morning! Conservatives are against Mr. Moms! (seriously, I'd never heard of that--most of the conservatives I know, mom was the primary caregiver, but both parents work because they have to; if the lady can make more and that allows dad to stay home, *she does.*)

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  3. Anonymous8:26 AM

    "Oooh! I found out something new this morning! Conservatives are against Mr. Moms!"

    The thing is, this *used* to be true, back in the 1970s when I was a kid, and now the people opposed to conservatives can't get their heads around the idea that conservatives in the 2000s are not the same as conservatives in the 1970s. This is something I have noticed in political arguments in general: people are rarely arguing against their opponents' *current* position or activities, usually they are going after their *past* positions. I work a lot with the mining industry, and we get hit with that sort of thing a lot - environmental groups rail against mining based on the admittedly bad behavior of the industry back in the 60s, and refuse to credit the idea that, just maybe, they might possibly have *improved* since then.

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  4. Great point, Tim. The topics are too complex to make your real argument against a real opponent, so you invent a straw man that vaguely resembles your opponent and whack at that.

    Dig the Republican infatuation with tax cuts. They blame the Democrats for raising taxes, but don't mention the consequences or cutting them - borrowing money which is effectively the same as raising taxes.

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