Yesterday, I saw John McCain confidently assert that he's "going to win this thing," meaning the up-coming election, now less than a week away. His confidence (in the face of multiple polling results that show him hopelessly behind Barack Obama) seems utterly misplaced--unless the fix is in, and he knows it.
I for one will be very, very relieved when this campaign is over. I am appalled by the amount of slime, smears, and race-baiting coming from the GOP's general direction--all things McCain could stop by taking firm charge of his party and its behavior. But he has the fighter jock mentality. Anything is OK if it helps him win.
I mourn for his dead integrity. I mourn for his lost historical reputation. If we could stop his history back in 2000, he'd get high marks from future historians of all political stripes for his having taken principled stands on contentious issues. He himself was the victim of race-baiting back in 2000. A truly scurrilous robocall claimed he had a black child out of wedlock. The facts? The child was an adoptee, the beneficiary of a truly noble effort on McCain's and his wife's part.
But the slimy robocall worked, and McCain did not get the GOP nomination in 2000. The lesson he apparently took from that result is that winning is the only thing that matters. He is now using the very same company that made the slimy robocalls against him in 2000 to make slimy robocalls against Obama in 2008.
Perhaps he has convinced himself that he can resume his principled stands once he wins office and has some power to do something about what he sees as the nation's problems. But even a grade-schooler can tell him that "if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas." He's fooling only himself if he thinks he can win the election and take office free of the mud stains he's inflicted on himself during the campaign. Once again, his judgment is called into question.
As for the GOP, most of the rabid right-wing, which is in fact the whole party at this point, has no love for McCain, but knows if he wins, the GOP keeps power. That's the party's only concern: keeping power. In my more paranoid moments, I even fear that if the GOP loses despite all its voter suppression efforts and vote fraud machinations and court challenges, its leaders simply won't let go and leave. One of the hallmarks of our system is the peaceful transition of power after elections, but I wouldn't put it past this crowd to throw that in the toilet, too--along with all the other civil liberties the Dubya administration has trashed in the name of its version of "America." Remember, this crowd is the group that thinks "real America" is only that part of the United States which agrees with them and walks in lock-step with them. The rest of us, as several GOP members recently have revealed in well-publicized gaffs, are somehow NOT "real Americans," and in fact are "anti-Americans." But wasn't Joe McCarthy totally discredited in the 1950s?
Here's another news flash: the GOP does NOT have a monopoly on patriotism! Seriously. I love my country just as much (if not more) than anyone in the right-wing crowd). Indeed, I love my country more because I understand that compromising what America truly is, even for the sake of "national security," is no different from lying down with dogs. You do get up with fleas.
It's going to be hard enough to endure the flea-dips we'll need if Obama wins and if the transition of power does go the way it's supposed to under our Constitution. But four more years of flea bites would be infinitely worse.
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