COUNTRY LAST

COUNTRY LAST

John McCain went to the podium early yesterday to claim credit for having convinced House Republicans to vote for the rescue (aka bailout) bill. 

Oops! 

Which about sums up the McCain candidacy, and why we must at all costs avoid a McCain Presidency. 

He is the "Oops" candidate. Sarah Palin was supposed to rescue McCain from certain defeat but now seems to be doing everything she can to bring it about. McCain himself is supposed to be the adult voice of experience and command but instead turns out to be a car wreck in progress haphazardly moving from one side of the road to the other. 

The reality is there are so many holes in the dyke we call John McCain's presidential campaign that they long ago ran out of fingers to plug them with. Two of McCain's top aides are this week holed up in Sedona, Arizona with Gov. Palin cramming her with information to prepare for Thursday's Vice-Presidential debate with Joe Biden. The bad news is she has so much to learn, there is no way she can do it by Thursday. The good news is expectations for her performance are so low that more or less standing at the podium for 90 minutes will be counted as a success. Meanwhile, back on the trail, the presidential candidate himself careens from one stated position to another (generally opposite) one, more or less in the space of a news cycle. He ludicrously blames Obama for the failure of the bailout and then says we must stop the partisanship. One day the economic fundamentals are good; the next we are in a crisis. In the morning he has saved the rescue plan by convincing House Republicans to vote for it; in the afternoon, Speaker Pelosi has convinced them otherwise apparently because she wasn't nice enough. 

His campaign motto is "Country First" and everywhere he goes, his rallies are festooned with signs saying that and speeches lauding his patriotic bona fides. It seems that only John McCain sacrifices political ambition for patriotic duty. But in fact it's a lie. Every move this past week has been about politics. The faux campaign suspension that never occurred. The hands on leadership pose which was no more than some phone calls and a speech to the GOP caucus, neither of which pushed the ball over the goal line. The "I won't debate until this is solved", which then became the "enough progress has been made for me to debate". The debate itself, where the only thing repeated more than "Senator Obama does not understand" was McCain's visceral condescension. Finally, yesterday's premature claim of bail out success (gotta win the news cycle and beat the other guy to the punch). 

 Here's the worst part. 

 He is bad at this. 

Nothing promised in the last week was even remotely delivered. Not the votes. Certainly not the economic rescue plan. Not the civil campaign he promised when this began (but has consistently abandoned as his numbers have tanked) or the bipartisanship he continues to demand of others while studiously avoiding himself. Not the judgment to pick lieutenants actually up to the jobs they might hold. 

 If McCain runs the country even half as badly as he is running his campaign, we are in big trouble. His first "Hail Mary" was Sarah Palin. The bloom was off that rose in about two weeks. His second one was the no debate pledge. That was punctured in about two days. What's the McCain plan here? A full Novena? 

 John McCain is a war hero who, from time to time, but far less than he or his supporters claim, reaches across the aisle. But he is tempermentally unsuited for the the job of President. He shoots from the hip. He is erratic. For all his courage, he lacks judgment, whether it's the judgment to know when a war should not be started or the judgment to know when a particular Governor should not be promoted or the judgment to know when all the votes have not been counted. And while he may not suffer from what we Catholics call the sin of pride, he suffers from its close cousin -- condescension. That's why he often loses it. It's not defensible passion. It's indefensible arrogance. 

And it is not the arrogance of a George W. Bush or a Sarah Palin. They think they are always getting one over on you.

John McCain thinks he's better than you.