Why I Like John McCain

Damn politics.  Some of us actually have to work in the morning.

But I had to write.  I have some sympathy for you, dear Reader.  You come to this blog, all two of you (thanks Mom and Dad), to read about my latest fascinating existential quandary and all you've been getting lately is "Sarah Palin hates polar bears."  

I can't help it.  It's what's on my mind.

As I struggled to stay awake through John McCain's speech, I realized one very obvious thing: This man is not going to win any awards for public speaking.  He may be a maverick, but he was clearly a C-student in "Speech and Debate."  And that's okay.  As the past eight years have shown, you don't have to be a good speaker (or be able to form a sentence) to be President.   Everyone including Evil Tina Fey... I'm sorry Sarah Palin... acknowledges that Obama's appeal is, in part, that he just *sounds* so damn different than the past eight years.  I don't think Barack could sound more different than George W. Bush, do you?  I really like how he doesn't talk down to me.  I like that I leave his speeches feeling better about my country than when I entered them.

But John McCain's speech tonight was respectful, moderate, hopeful, and slightly ironic considering his party had just spent a week doing all the things McCain promises he would get rid of in Washington.  I felt like an alien ship had landed from the 80's, back when Republicans actually represented the center of America and not the scariest of our relatives (now available in cowboy hats!).  A deafening silence set over the hall when McCain honored Obama's qualities and achievement, talked about how corrupt Republicans and the Republican party have lost the trust of America, about how both parties in Washington are broken.  You could nearly taste the desperate thirst on the part of the delegates for the blood of Democrats, Liberals, Media, and anyone else who dares to ask a question about the direction of our country (to their credit, they have yet to blame Canada).  Their applause seemed especially forced save for the end, when John McCain was truly inspiring.  

I give him a lot of credit for going in there and being himself, for not pretending to be a neocon and Sarah Palin's soul mate.  Sure, harping on his Vietnam service is kind of ironic considering he's telling the story to the same delegates who viciously destroyed his campaign 8 years ago. They were crying and weeping for him, but you know if he were a Democrat they'd be Swiftboating him back to Hanoi.

I had the overwhelming sense that John McCain is too good for them.  He is the candidate their party needs but not the candidate their party deserves, to quote an especially relevant movie.  It's no wonder all anyone can talk about is Sarah Palin.  She was much flashier, and she proves that all one has to do to be considered "conservative" is to talk about what a gutless unpatriotic inept elitist [Gore, Kerry, Obama, Big Bird] your opponent is.

But not you, John.  You shared a deeply personal story about the moment in Hanoi when you were broken.  If, in another life, you were instead an author, Oprah would be crying as you recounted your incredible tale of heroism.  But instead you are reduced to being coronated by the same kingmakers who have ruled over the past eight disastrous years with their feigned smiles and warlike chants and their gleaming white skin.  

You are a good man, John McCain.  I'm proud that you're an American.  And thank you for holding the Republican party more accountable for the past eight years than anyone else has managed to do.  That took serious cajones, and in front of 40,000 of them, no less. 

Personally, I do not believe our country's problems can be solved by the same party that created them.  I think you confirmed that for me tonight more than anything else could have.  That you, John McCain, are such an outsider in your own party says less about you and more about what the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Reagan, and my father, has lost.

  

Martin