Ploys, Tactics, Strategies, Game Plans, One-Ups

All candidates use all of the above when running for office. But where McCain and Palin (and Bush before them) are concerned, that’s all there is. Had George W. Bush been truthful when asked how he would accomplish his plan (any plan), he would have said, “By cheating.” Or he would have said, “I haven’t the foggiest notion.” And like George W. Bush, what McCain and Palin do have is Karl Rove and his ploys, tactics, strategies, game plans and one-upmanship. It has now become clear to even such a Republican cheerleader as David Brooks that John McCain hasn't the foggiest notion about anything. After using considerable ink this morning to bloviate about McCain of yore and back in the day, David Brooks finally says in his New York Times Op/Ed column (“Thinking About John McCain”): “...What disappoints me about the McCain campaign is it has no central argument. I had hoped that he would create a grand narrative explaining how the United States is fundamentally unprepared for the 21st century and how McCain’s worldview is different. McCain has not made that sort of all-encompassing argument, so his proposals don’t add up to more than the sum of their parts. Without a groundbreaking argument about why he is different, he’s had to rely on tactical gimmicks to stay afloat. He has no frame to organize his response when financial and other crises pop up.” Exactly when John McCain became a lying, cheating bag of wind is unclear, but it was probably coincidental with the Iraq war. That’s when John McCain became a self-aggrandizing old man fantasizing about his days of glory. And it is that self-aggrandizing old man who suspended his campaign to rush to Washington on Wednesday—if rush is the word that can be used about his various celebrity talk-show stops en route—in order to show Congress how to fix the financial crisis bailout debacle. What McCain envisioned he could or would do, is anyone’s guess. But that is not important to McCain. As even David Brooks has to admit, McCain has no plans or proposals, he only has tactical gimmicks. And if it is now obvious to one and all that John McCain is a pin-prick away from deflating in front of our eyes, it is also clear to reality show aficionados that John McCain and Sarah Palin have both become their own worst nightmare—a political joke and laugh-line for comics. Their final gimmick, I have no doubt, will be to blame Barack Obama and television for their becoming the clowns in a three-ring-circus.