This is a very important weekend for those with the power to do something about our current economic mess to do it, as smartly as they can, and for the rest of us to get over this parochial idea that this isn't our problem because we aren't some some guy with a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. See, below, a very good editorial on the subject, by Paul Krugman.
This is, moreover, a remarkable time in history, the end of an era—the Conservative Movement as we know it, whose infancy began around 1966, when the last great movement before it, the New Deal/Great Society Era, went down in flames with Vietnam.
For those of us eager to see what comes now, who are unreconstructed on Ronald Reagan's purported sainthood in the same way, perhaps, that eager conservatives in the late 60's were unreconstructed on the sainthood of Franklin Roosevelt, and perhaps John Kennedy, too, this is no time to gloat. Whatever comes next will have its arc as well: its ascendency, its heyday, its tragic mistakes—it, too, will go down in flames, sooner or later.
Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself, but I don't think so, not this time. The Conservative Movement is unraveling much like the market, and from the ashes something new will come, something John McCain is not destined to lead.
Bill O'Reilly, whom I've never been fond of, but for some reason never found as risible as the Limbaughs and Coulters and Savages of this era well into its gloaming (and perhaps the reason is in the link below—Thanks, B—) knows this.
And so does John McCain, I believe. Who of late, since Gail Collins' column http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/opinion/11collins.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink went to press, is showing a bigger self, that self I always suspected, along with the tide of history, and given his constituency, would cost him the election.
Specifically, at a rally in Minnesota yesterday, where supporters of his ticket were, reportedly, getting ever more rabid, McCain, in response to one supporter's remark: that she was scared of an Obama presidency, replied, "you don't have to be scared to have him be President of the United States."
In her blog, Ann Marie Cox further reports that when another supporter claimed to be afraid of Obama because he was "an Arab terrorist," McCain took the microphone, saying, "No, no ma'am ... He's a decent family man with whom I happen to have some disagreements."
This is a man who, in the end, and sadly for his fate, isn't comfortable (not enough at least) with the nuts in his party. He will never make peace with them. As they have always suspected.
I am glad to see this side of John McCain come out as the days of his candidacy and the era of which he has had the unfortunate luck of being the last standard bearer wind down. I have learned a lot about John McCain in the last several months, and haven't been pleased by much of it. But I can't help but find a moving pathos, a compelling story, still, in this guy who was the supposed "fuck-up" grandson of a great admiral, who became a Navy pilot—a not very good one, it seems—who was then shot down, captured, and tortured, who could have been released early, much earlier, because of his family connections, but refused.
For whatever disagreements I might have with this man that I have brazenly made good sport of lately, he is, in the end, that kind of man, one who will, for all his flaws, often enough (if not with Hillary) suffer the consequences rather than shame himself.
Which, generally speaking, is not the kind of character to have if you want to get elected president of a country.
And for all the similarities in policy, such a character does indeed contrast sharply with our current president, who has had a fine opportunity to show leadership in these last days of his tenure, in this mess he helped create, but hasn't, who skirted a war he supported and, with Daddy's help, joined the National Guard, where there was no chance of his getting shot down, caught and tortured. We can applaud the latter's self-preservation, if not the man himself.
Still, don't trust my judgment on any of this—not yet. Not before you get yourself, and everyone you can, to the polling booths on November 4th, and help destiny out a little, should it prove obdurate.
1 comment:
Hey Craig,
I enjoy your column. Interesting times. Re; McCain, Perhaps he has found his soul or at least some decency beyond the seduction of the presidency. The cynic in me says, "Nah." He's a master negotiator, politician. What better way to woo the independents and not-yet-decided than to concede turf to the nuts, then humbly reel in twice as much. The middle 10% will decide this election, and McCain will be whoever he needs to be to win. Now, perhaps Palin can find her tolerance, or at least her passport.
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