Debate Round-Up, Pt. 1

I've been pretty lax about posting lately, which is inexcusable, as there have been some world class hijinx going on along the campaign trail over the last week or so. Most notably, we've seen two debates - the first between Barack Obama and John McCain, and the only debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.

I'm not going to spend much time on the first Obama vs. McCain ballyhoo, because I don't feel like there's all that much to say. McCain was smug, Obama stuttered a bit too much. None of this was in the least bit surprising. This was McCain's debate. It was a foreign policy night, and that's where John McCain is going to continue hammering Obama for being inexperienced. McCani's job was to keep the focus on Iraq in order to back Obama into a corner where he would have to admit that the Surge was a rollicking success. Frankly, I'm not too sold on that tactic, or strategy, or whatever McCain wants to call it. Yes, the Surge made a difference, and General Petraeus is to be commended for that, as are all of the incredibly brave and selfless men and women who put their lives on the line to make sure this risky move paid off. So I'll go on the record saying the Surge worked. But that doesn't make it a good idea. If I get in a car with you, and you're drunk behind the wheel, and we crash into a tree, I don't care if you have fantastic insurance that will cover all of the damage. I'd rather you didn't get behind the wheel when you're hammered. John McCain wanted Obama to admit that his insurance policy paid for the complete restoration of the car. But I'm with Obama. I'd rather have seen John McCain lay off the sauce in the first place.

A foreign policy debate was also where Obama was bound to slip a little. Obama was strongest when he was talking about the economic crisis, but many people think he could have hit McCain harder. Lord knows the old maverick deserves it. But really, Obama had to play it cool. If the economic talk had been at the end of the debate instead of the beginning, he could have come down hard, but that was never going to happen. It was bound to be the first topic of discussion, and Obama couldn't start out the night looking like a young hothead.

In a lot of ways, Obama and McCain are trying to occupy some difficult roles. Obama is a young guy trying to prove he has the wisdom and vision of a more experienced statesman. Although he is energizes young voters whenever he speaks to them, when he is addressing the entire nation, which, I'm told, includes Florida, he has to temper himself. But if he plays it too cool, he sounds like a doddering professor, and evidently the worst thing you can do if you want to lead this nation is sound like an erudite, intelligent, thoughtful person. America hates those.

John McCain, on the other hand, is a doddering old man trying to prove that he's still young, spry, and fiery. For the record, he is not. And if he is elected, we will learn that very quickly. Remember when Bill Clinton first took office? Remember how electrifying he was, at least in comparison to what we had been dealing with recently? Everyone was talking about his vitality, his energy, and his charisma, and only about half of that time were they actually talking about his penis. Now remember what he looked like four years later? Bill Clinton was gray going into the White House. At the end of his first term, he was white. By the end of his second term, he was legally dead. To his credit, Zombie Bill Clinton has still proven himself a much more charming and compelling leader since leaving the Oval Office than Bush ever did. Anyway, the point here is that John McCain might have been a great President, had he won in 2000, back when he still had a soul. Back when he could call himself a maverick without making thinking people everywhere want to claw their own eyes out. But McCain sold his soul to Karl Rove in exchange for the dark necromancy required to keep him alive and in politics for another eight years, long enough to campaign once again. Now, with a recent voting record that makes him look like George Bush III, and with Rove's fiendish juju fading in his veins, John McCain is trying to prove that he won't die in office. But the sad truth is, if elected, he probably will. Being President is the hardest job on the face of the planet. Making the wrong decision, particularly at this point in the world's shared history, could literally be the end of life as we know it. Most young, hearty people can't handle that kind of pressure. Put it on the shoulders of a 72 year old man with a history of serious health problems, and that will be that. And then we'll have President Palin. And then we'll all die. But I'll get to her in my next post.

One last word on John McCain before I move on to the VP debate (good thing I said I wasn't going to say much about McCain and Obama, huh?). I resent John McCain and Sarah Palin, but mostly McCain, for ruining the word "maverick" for me. I used to love that word. It's a cool word. It's fun to say. It means something neat. It conjures images of Tom Cruise before we all knew he was crazy, back when we all just thought he was gay. He was Maverick, and we, as a nation, were his wingman. It conjures images of Mel Gibson before we knew he was an anti-Semite, back when we all thought he was just crazy. He was Maverick, and we were his posse. It conjures images of Jack Kelly and James Garner, back when we remembered who they were. It was 1957, and we were not born yet (but John McCain was 21).

A maverick used to mean some cool-as-hell guy who rebelled against The Man. Nowadays, you can't say "maverick" without referring to McCain. And calling McCain a maverick is, in itself, a maverick move, at least if you replace "The Man" with "The Truth." There was a time when John McCain rebelled against The Man, that being his own party. He voted his conscience. He conducted himself with integrity. I am a staunch Democrat, as you may have detected, but I held John McCain in immesurably high esteem. In 2000, I wanted Al Gore to win, of course, but I crossed my fingers and hoped that he would be running against John McCain, so that we would have a Presidential race worthy of the American people. In that wonderful fantasy race, whoever won would inherit the unprecedented financial surplus, as well as the surplus of international goodwill left by Bill Clinton, and not squander it ruthlessly within a single year. Of course, things didn't work out that way. McCain remained in my good graces for most of the next four years. But as the Bush administration wore on, and John McCain started abandoning his principles and voting the party line with such regularity that it could only have been due to political ambitions, senility, or a combination of the two, I lost my respect for him, and he lost the right to call himself a maverick. And Sarah Palin? Forget "maverick," she shouldn't be allowed to speak in public, period. But again, I'll get to her. For now, I have a final question: assuming we're all around long enough to find out, will the word "maverick" ever lose its connection to McCain/Palin? Will we ever get our word back? If not, we need another badass-sounding word to replace it. I suggest "rockules." It combines the awesomeness of rocking with the mythical might of Hercules, who was something of a maverick himself, in the most McCainless sense of the word.

So, from the Original Rockules, that's all for now.