John McCain III Watch

But enough about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama…what about that sniveling little imbecile, John McCain; what is he up to as the Democratic Party burns?

Well, as I’ve written previously, he has himself pretty much been running amok in the Middle East, recently confusing Shiites with Sunnis, pulling on Arabs' beards, like a child, to see if they are real, and otherwise displaying his ignorance about the region and its inhabitants. Not the best thing in the world if McCain’s attempt is to look like a statesman and a man at ease in the world, capable of not only navigating its complexities but actively influencing world events.

The good news is that if McCain keeps up his Charlie Chaplin routine, the Democrats can beat themselves silly right up to the convention without doing much damage to whomever is ultimately the Party’s nominee. And there is always the chance that if McCain stays abroad long enough, is briefed incessantly (think of the poor fellow in A Clockwork Orange who was receiving “aversion therapy”) on international relations, and receives a brain transplant he might actually come up with some kind of foreign policy that offers, with respect to Iraq, say, something other than the woefully inadequate and incompetent policies of George W. Bush. On the other hand, all the travelling in the world hasn’t helped Bush do much of anything in the hotspots of the world—the Middle East, Africa, China, New Orleans—and, if I remember correctly, the last time I saw him outside the country, he appeared as if he was permitting the prize raptor of one of the million Saudi princes, which was perching on the President’s forearm, to do its business on him.

At home in the good old USA, McCain is also up to his hips in it as he flip-flops and flap-flips in his ass-puckering attempts to court the crucial Republican snake handler and right-wing-radio-talk-show-host constituencies. He is so shameless about this, in fact, that there are rumors he will have to rename his bus from the current, Straight Talk Express, to the If you Don’t Like My Response Today Ask Me Again Tomorrow Milk Train before he will be permitted to take the bus across state lines (truth-in-advertising laws).

Why, McCain wouldn’t even support now the immigration bill he helped write, abortion rights which he once championed, or stick to his comments, made during his campaign when he was running against Bush, about the questionable ancestry of the religious zealots of the lunatic right, or even keep a respectful distance from the very lobbyists that are the target of McCain’s (and Feingold’s) campaign and ethics reforms . Apparently McCain has always had an outsized love for lobbyists as his current campaign staff—many of whom were lobbyists—makes clear. If he has in fact been boinking a lobbyist (as infamously implied by the New York Times) this would be the most innocuous relationship he has with any of these folks. But the list of McCain’s flip-flops is too long to go into further here, and even includes a recent reneging on a tobacco tax he championed. The shape-shifting is certain to continue through November, though, as McCain rushes around trying to curry the favor of the Republican lunatic fringe, so there will be many more opportunites to discuss this political Proteus with presidential aspirations.

Anyway, this is what McCain has been up while the Democrats beat themselves over the heads like Punch and Judy for the increasingly questionable prize of becoming the Party’s nominee. And as he trips and lurches through the Middle East and takes the circuitous and tortuous path around the issues in his smoking and creaky bus in this country, McCain looks more and more like he is cut from the same cloth as the current resident of the WH: his view of the war in Iraq nearly indistinguishable from the current commander-and-chief’s, his gaffes and blunders all too familiar, and the prospects of his bumbling his way to the presidency and having to deal with the complexities of the Middle East, a broken health care policy, and an economy headed for the ditch, at least as frightening.

Here's a fervent hope that all of McCain’s stumblings and bumblings will lead anywhere other than through the front door of the nation’s most famous house in November.