Is McCain too much of a Boy Scout?

Echoes of 1996 -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Today’s blog has a couple of directions it can go, maybe I’ll explore both avenues. First of all, it looks like the 2008 election is shaping up to be McCain vs. Obama. My candidate of choice was John Edwards and he’s already wiped out. Hillary was my second choice but her campaign appears to be imploding and maybe we don’t need someone running the country that has trouble with placards and phone banks. Obama reminds me of New Jersey’s ex-governor James McGreavy. There is something smarmy and inauthentic about him – like a smooth operator who’s just a little too smooth. His supporters give me a bigger case of the willies than he does. These people who are injecting religious fervor and metaphors frighten me – Obama is not the messiah. He didn’t pay his college parking fines, and he fibbed in his autobiography; I don’t think Jesus would operate that way.

The “talking heads” on today’s Meet the Press said that Hillary would have to take 70% of remaining delegates to win. That’s not likely, and it’s also unlikely that her peers will tolerate a brokered Democratic convention. It’s looking more and more like Obama vs. McCain.

Now on to McCain. I could stomach him very well if it weren’t for that 100 year Iraq commitment. Also, he’s anti-Choice and he’s reversed directions on a couple of important issues – immigration and tax cuts for the wealthy. Shades of Mitt Romney’s flip-flops – “I’ll say anything to get elected”.

Here is where McCain has his biggest problem, and it’s not even properly a problem. He’s too nice. He comes across as a nice older man, who has said repeatedly that he won’t throw mud pies or be “underhanded”. He’s already decried other people focusing on Obama’s middle name (“Hussein”) and the picture of Obama in Arabic garb. Both were probably intended by Hillary operatives to raise the specter that Obama is anti-Semitic; possibly even to suggest that he has ties to Nation of Islam and Lois Farrakhan.

Now McCain has the sweetie pie grandpa persona that calls to mind Bob Dole from the 1996 election. Dole did not have any hardball players like Karl Rove or Bob Perry on his team. W Bush on the other hand, had nothing but hardball players running his 2000/2004 campaigns. In fact, they are the same ones who derailed McCain in 2000. As they did with John Kerry, they managed to use McCain’s Viet Nam heroism against him. They wouldn't blanch at kicking a man in the balls a couple of times and then dropping a file cabinet on his head while he's down.

The voting public says it doesn’t like mud pie contests and yet the mud sticks and seems to be effective. When you have a genteel, avuncular Boy Scout like McCain as your candidate, you may be on the losing team. I myself am appalled by the whole turn of events. We’ve gone from a knuckle-dragging Nazi (“W” of the last 8 years) to a smarmy, smooth talking “phenomenon” who can sell tonic without showing anyone the ingredients. The American voting public never ceases to astound me. This is probably another blog topic, but the unmentionable 3rd party candidate Ralph Nader is looking better all the time.

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