Country Last

As so McCain, who has the audacity to campaign on the theme of "country first", is doing precisely the opposite, and precisely the sort of things that he once deplored himself. Republicans don’t really seem to have the shame gene, as far as I can see, but if they did, this man would be avoiding mirrors for the rest of his life.

Of course, this is not really all that new for him. He’s been running around flacking for Bush for eight years now. He’s completely changed his positions on the religious right, whom he once described as "agents of intolerance", as well as on immigration, torture, taxes and more, in every case placating the loonies in his party to win the nomination. Some conviction politician, eh? He once mortgaged the dignity of blacks in America by coming out in favor of the confederate symbol on the flag of South Carolina, just to pander to white racists in his own party. That is, before admitting that he had done so and re-reversing his position, of course. And, talk about country first, what the hell were he and Palin doing in the Gulf Coast as it scrambled to prepared for the series of hurricanes coming its way? George Bush, operational commander-in-chief of the federal government, said he wasn’t going to go there and cause a distraction. Gee, I wonder what the senator from Arizona and the governor of Alaska brought to the preparation efforts down there? You’d almost think they were using a national disaster as a campaign event.

I’ve seen Barack Obama reacting to the allegations and smears coming out of the Republican convention, and I’ve seen some of the ads he’s running. The latter are pretty good, but the former is pathetic. This dude better freakin’ cowboy up, and fast, or he is going to get consumed by the Rove machine, just like Dukakis, Gore, Kerry and the rest. Obama needs to show some anger, he needs to stop speaking so hesitantly in his delivery, he needs some sharp pithy lines to trot out, and he needs to go on the attack. In short, he needs to bare some teeth.

Most of all, while he still barely has a chance to do so, he needs to inoculate himself from what is surely coming. Now is the time to runs endless ads associating McCain with Rove with Bush with dirty politics and to scream out foul play, especially along the lines of not putting country first. Such inoculation will prove invaluable when the pond scum in the McCain camp want to start going very, very low, as the campaign nears election day. Obama can then fit such attacks into the frame he’s created, shake his head in ‘sadness’ at the ‘desperation’ of the McCain campaign, and take away the single thing the Republican has going for him – the false perception that he is a patriot and an honorable man. But if Obama waits until Schmidt really gets going, without paving the way in advance for an accurate perception of what they’re actually doing, it will be too late.

Aren’t they smart enough to get this?!?! The thought of another weak-kneed Democratic presidential candidate getting rolled by a GOP dirty politics machine is too much to possibly stomach, especially in 2008, when a candidate pretty much just needs to show up in order to win.

I have tentatively supported Obama so far in large part because I liked what I saw as some fighting instincts during the primary season. But if he can’t attack McCain for picking someone who doesn’t meet McCain’s own definition of what the country needs in a president, if he can’t show enough intelligence to put this patriotism crap off limits after the swift-boating experience of 2004, if he can’t show some grit to the voting public who longs to see it, then he won’t win and doesn’t deserve to.

But that’s him, and that’s his problem.

I deserve better than that, and so does the rest of the world.

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