We’re now in the season of the post-election post-mortem. It’s that awkward time when loser politicians go to great lengths to distance themselves from their failures, gleefully throwing anyone and everyone they can under the proverbial bus, in hopes that no one will notice the obvious.
So, on cue, the McCain/Palin folks are finger-pointing with a speed that would make Quick-Draw McGraw blush.
Granted, some of it is justified. The evidence continues to mount that, duh, Sarah Palin was sub-par for the job. But, more importantly, John McCain was, too. How can you not know how to turn on a computer, yet be responsible for inventing the Blackberry? How can you go through three debates without uttering the phrase “middle class”? And, what are you smoking, if you think the fundamentals of the economy are sound, and why aren’t you sharing?
In the process, we can trot down any number of rabbit holes, how the McCain/Palin campaign was a case study in how not to run for office. The case can be made that, during the primaries season, John McCain didn’t win the nomination so much as he was the only one who didn’t lose it. He was just the last man standing. On and on we could go, about being in Iraq for 100 years, ad nauseum. But, why McCain lost boils down to one fundamental universal sin--
John McCain doesn’t understand power.
There are lots of kinds of power. Chairman Mao contended it came from the end of a gun barrel. Any teenage girl in the backseat of a car knows about her power. A slave owner’s whip has power. Water has power. Lightning has power. Words have power.
But, when it comes to politics, there is one eternal law--
You get power by giving it away.
If you give me $10, I’ll spend it, and that creates a win-win for all involved. If you give me a good-paying job, I’ll buy a house and a car and a big screen TV. I’ll take my wife out to eat in a nice restaurant. We’ll go on vacation. We’ll start a saving account in the local bank. And, everybody will get to eat, because I’ll get to eat.
But, trickle-on economics is just a nice way of saying, “We’re going to work you to exhaustion and we’re going to soak up the profits from your efforts and give you whatever crumbs that fall from the table.”
In the short-run, if I’m foolish enough, I’m going to take out credit cards and second mortgages, hoping to keep up appearances until better times come back. But, eventually, the cards will max out and I-the-consumer will break down. And, when I-the-consumer break down, you-the-fat-cat are soon to follow.
Why?
Despite the magical thinking of Republicans, we’re all in this together.
McCain’s conservativism is closely akin to feudal thinking. One of the key reasons the Roman Empire crumbled into feudalism was because the Roman economy was a cash-based economy; gold and silver moved it. But, toward the end of the Roman Empire, the rich hoarded up the cash and the populace moved to a land-based economy. The common man’s livelihood depended on how much he could farm and bump up to the feudal lord. And, thus, the Empire crumbled because you can’t tax someone who has no cash and you can’t pay an army with wheat; it will rot before you get it to its destination.
Ergo, enter Joe the Plumber. John McCain’s poster child was not someone who wanted to punch a clock for a living. Joe the Plumber was supposedly on the cusp of becoming part of the ownership class, one of the Haves. How far removed is that from the old medieval fairy-tales, where only the kings and princes and nobility mattered, and the peasants were just tickled pink to see the rich get richer?
In John McCain’s world, only the owners matter.
But, every time I clicked the “Donate” button at www.barackobama.com and sent in my little $25, I got a thank-you email that told me I owned a piece of that campaign.
To Barack Obama, I matter.
Why?
Barack Obama understands a basic law of human interaction-- you get power by giving it away.
And, that’s why John McCain lost.
TWH
