McPain

I am beginning to think I might support John McCain's campaign for president. I look at him, and I hear the opening strains of Lebowski: "Sometimes there's a man . . . sometimes there's a man . . . well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there." And isn't that McCain? Cranky, old, forgetful, mean, decrepit, in possession of a few jokes we still titter at out of obligation. He seems to me to capture the Zeitgeist of post-Bush America: exhausted, grumpy, and eager to assign blame. His voice is persistently nasal, and everything he says sounds like a whine. Actually, most of the time, if he's talking, then he is whining, so perhaps that point is moot. His reverence for the military knows no bounds, and he intends to use this glorious tool as often as possible, and yet his instrumental vision of how precisely this is going to work, what precisely he's going to do with it, is hazy. He appears to despise his wife but enjoy her money, and she appears to tolerate his mooching in order to remain close to the corridors of power. This largely Roman arrangement appeals to my sense of history and my fondness for classical civilization. Ask him to talk about anything other than ill-definited martial glory and he freezes up like a fifteen-year-old asked to give an oral report. Where George Bush would simply string together a series of non sequiturs like a glue-sniffer debating himself, McCain gathers his brow, and his eyes dart wildly. He appears genuinely to want to answer, but standing at the head of the class seizes something in his throat, and anyway, he didn't do the reading. The presently floating notion that he will take periodic questions from Congress is charming in its insincerity. "Mr. President, last quarter's numbers show core inflation below projections, but with food and fuel prices steadily rising, the economy is facing inflationary pressures. How have your economic policies addressed these issues, and can you prod the Fed to act more aggressively on the monetary side?" "Fuck you. At least I don't make myself up like a trollop, you cunt." It is also almost inconceivable that McCain would run for a second term, as he will by then have achieved an age unseen since the antediluvian era. Which means that in four years, we can have another delightfully ridiculous primary season in which Hillary Clinton jockeys with Jeb Bush and Bobby Jindal for the Republican nomination.