No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Obama 1, McCain 0

I haven't had much time to follow the news last week, let alone blog about it. But I did manage to listen to most of the first McCain-Obama debate on my car radio while stuck in a typically horrendous Los Angeles traffic jam. My snap judgment: it was a tie, and therefore Obama won.

What I mean by that is, foreign policy is supposed to be McCain's strong suit and an area where Obama is appallingly weak, naive and inexperienced. Well, McCain did better than I expected, but Obama more than held his own against him. Of course I may have missed some visual clues. (Update: It looks like there was indeed a lot of visual subtext that did not work in McCain's favor.)

I remember hearing that people who listened to the famous Nixon-Kennedy debate on the radio thought that Nixon was the clear winner, but television viewers who saw Nixon sweating and squirming had a very different impression. It certainly seemed to me that McCain sounded like Abe Simpson, his weak, wavering voice suffering from the comparison with Obama's confident tone. And after the hundredth time hearing McCain say "Senator Obama doesn't understand this, Senator Obama doesn't understand that," I wanted to reach through the radio and throttle the condescending old bastard.

Mind you, there were some occasions when Obama should have hit back harder. For example when McCain called him naive for saying that both sides were at fault in the recent Russia-Georgia conflict. Well, both sides were at fault! In particular, Georgia initiated the violence by bombarding the city of Tskhinvali, something you will never learn from the right-wing corporatist media. Nor will you learn that McCain's top foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann, is an agent of the Georgian government and has made almost a million dollars lobbying for them - which turned out to be an excellent investment when they got back a billion dollars from the US taxpayer. The public deserves to know how much McCain's view of the situation has been colored by his advisor's glaring conflict of interest.

Anyway, if you think of the current financial holocaust as a test of the presidential candidates, it's clear that Obama passed with flying colors while McCain flunked abysmally. Obama has been looking presidential, keeping himself informed, talking to all the main players, and calmly but firmly emphasizing the need for principles and accountability in dealing with the crisis.

What has McCain been doing? Running around with his hair on fire, jumping randomly from one stance to its opposite (days after everyone else has reacted), throwing hissy fits and making a lot of noise to grab attention but contributing nothing of substance, foolishly snubbing the media, and pulling desperate gimmicks that were of a kind with his choice (if it really was his, and not Karl Rove's) of Sarah Palin as his running mate. His announcement that he would suspend his campaign and duck out of the first debate was widely seen as fear of facing Obama and an inability to multi-task, rather than the grand statesmanlike gesture he intended it to be. In all, McCain's hysterical and incoherent response to the financial meltdown was a serious blunder which must leave great doubts about his ability to handle similar challenges as president.

Anyway, Obama won the first debate by default, and I confidently predict that the Biden-Palin debate next week will be a train wreck for the rethugs. That woman is so out of her depth, and so blissfully unaware of it, there is no way anyone with the IQ of a sea cucumber would wish her to be in the same time zone as the White House.

After that, it's on to the debates about the economy and domestic policy, and Mr. Keating Five, I've Lost Count Of How Many Houses I Own will have his ass handed to him. Of course, John Kerry wiped the floor with George Bush Junior in the 2004 debates, but the race was still close enough to allow the rethugs to Diebold it and steal a second term for Junior. But it's becoming clearer every day to everyone except the head-up-the-ass true believers that McCain-Palin would be a ghastly choice during the current clusterf*ck of multiple simultaneous crises - crises that were created by the Junior administration's corruption and incompetence, and would only be perpetuated and worsened by McCain.

Knowing the Democratic party's infinite genius for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, I get extremely worried and frustrated when I hear people blithely saying that it's going to be a landslide for Obama. Instead of sitting on their asses, they should be out pounding the streets, working night and day, and fighting like hell to make it a landslide. Because anything less, and the 'thugs will steal yet another election! But the good news is that it can be a landslide if we fight hard enough. We can win and we must win!

See you next weekend!