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Is McCain Senile?

October 27, 2008

Probably not. But many American commentators are genuinely puzzled at his choice of vice-presidential running mate for the November presidential elections.

In the American system, vice-presidential nominees are not chosen by primaries or on the convention floor. He or she is the personal choice of the presidential nominee.

Thus Barack Obama, the winner in the Democratic primaries and caucuses, exercised his prerogative after due diligence and came up with Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware. By most accounts, it was an inspired choice.

Sen. Biden has long been prominent in Washington politics, with an established reputation as being knowledgeable in foreign affairs. He is perceived to fill a gap in Sen. Obama’s political curriculum vitae, that in foreign policy. Thus the pair is seen as logically complementing each other..

The same cannot be said of Sen. John McCain and his choice of vice-presidential running mate. It is safe to assume that before Aug. 30, 99.5 percent of the population of the United States, outside of the state of Alaska, had never heard of Sarah Palin, incumbent governor since 2006 of, well, Alaska.

It did not help reassure puzzled pundits and voters that before she became governor of Alaska, Ms.Palin had been mayor of the town of Wasilla (pop. 8,741). Or that during high school days, she had played center guard in basketball and was known as Sarah Barracuda. Or that Sen. McCain had apparently met her only once (last February) in his entire life, though he had talked to her, by telephone, one other time since.

Even Republican apologists and strategists were at a loss to cite anything significant to give a positive spin to the Great Puzzlement that this nomination has spawned. The GOP line is that Gov. Palin had fought against corruption in Alaska, had refused to support a Bridge to Nowhere, and something or other that she did or did not do. Someone in Fox News, the cable channel of the neo-cons, is said to have remarked that Gov. Palin has some experience in foreign relations because Alaska is right next to Russia. Amazing!

My reading is that Sen. McCain made this choice based on his personality flaws. He is known to have a short temper and does not get along easily with other people. During the early part of the primary season, he had candidly admitted that he knew absolutely nothing about economics, which one of his rivals, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, used to hit him on the head with. So he scratched Romney off his short VP list.

Perhaps for a similar, personality-based reason, he scratched New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani off the list, who has something of a star status from 9/11 and could outshine him on the campaign trail, aside from being too liberal by Republican standards.

McCain’s constant beef against Obama has been that Obama was only a celebrity and did not have the executive experience to qualify for the presidency, a bias that was uncannily reinforced when Obama chose Biden as his running mate Two articulate and verbose lawyers, both without any executive experience in managing a state or a federal agency..

But what does McCain do? He scratched out Romney, and Giuliani and former Pennsylvania Governor and former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Rich from his VP short list - each one with more executive experience than Obama and Biden combined, each one with more executive experience than McCain himself - and chose instead an unknown woman whose executive experience has been limited to being mayor of a small town in Alaska for six years , then being governor of that state for less than two, whom McCain has met only once in his entire life.

Does this make any sense to anyone other than a die-hard Republican?

It makes some sense to social conservatives, whether Republican or independent. Ms. Palin is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and is against gun control. She is also against same-sex marriage, birth control and abortion. Her youngest child was diagnosed with Down’s syndrome – a chromosomal deficiency – four months into her pregnancy, but she chose not to abort the foetus. She also rejects Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and wants to have the Creationism of Christian Evangelicals taught in public schools.

The idea that McCain is trying to win Hillary Clinton’s women supporters, who were disappointed when Obama did not choose her as his VP, is nonsense. Most of Hillary’s women supporters would never support Palin’s conservative agenda.

Here seems to be the key element in McCain’s choice of Ms. Palin, and there is reason to believe that the Christian Evangelicals, who constitute 30 to 35 percent of the American electorate and continue to be the biggest single political bloc that still supports the disgraced George W. Bush, will rally around the McCain-Palin team.

With Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson gone to their heavenly rewards, the leading Christian Evangelical preacher now is John Hagee, head of a mega-church in Texas. As early as more than a year ago – and I mentioned it in a column of mine then - the Rev. Hagee anointed McCain as the successor to George W, in a lavish ceremony in Texas attended by McCain, to which George W. sent a congratulatory message. This was long before Hagee’s endorsement of McCain last April, which was criticized as being anti-Catholic and from which McCain has distanced himself…

Hagee is also national chairman of a Christian-Zionist organization called Christians United for Israel. Christian Evangelicals believe that war in the Middle East is biblically foretold and divinely ordained. They support Israel because they believe that, though Israel will be destroyed,144,000 Israeli Jews will be spared and they will convert to Christianity. And this will be the signal for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

In this light, Barack Obama’s 16-month withdrawal plan for US troops from Iraq has been pre-empted. The Bush government has been negotiating with the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Noor al-Maliki for a timetable under which US troops will withdraw from all Iraqi cities by June 2009, and withdraw from all of Iraq by end of 2011, “depending on the situation on the ground.”

This is obviously meant to take the wind out of Obama’s 16-month withdrawal sail. Depending on the situation on the ground means full withdrawal from Iraq can be rescinded or reinterpreted after the November 2008 elections. McCain’s 100 years in Iraq (and Afghanistan) – or how ever long it will take for the biblical prophecies to be fulfilled – is therefore more likely to become the conventional American wisdom.

It is significant that on Aug. 20, as I mentioned in a column last week, Obama was ahead of McCain by only one point in the CNN poll of that date. As I write this, the CNN poll of Sept 01 puts Obama still ahead by only one point, despite all the hoopla and hoohah at the Democratic convention in Denver last week. That means there was not much of a bounce for Obama and Biden, as had been expected from that coronation.

The Republican convention, scheduled for this week in St. Paul, Minnesota, has been scaled down considerably in deference to the deaths and devastation that Hurricane Gustav is expected to visit on New Orleans and neighboring towns and cities.

McCain is not senile. God is on his side. Ask the Rev. Hagee. *****

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