And the Hits Just Keep A-Coming

John McCain has had a worse day than last Friday, but it was the beginning of a long presence in Hanoi. If Senator McCain's performance in the debate was not a deal-breaker for undecided voters, then Sarah Palin will be the bullet that ends the pulse of the Republucan campaign in 2008.

It is not appropriate to blame McCain. The handlers from his party have managed to take the likeable, engaging maverick operating on a shoestring, and managed to convert him into a cookie-cutter Republican candidate, scarcely distinguished from former Georgia Representative Pat Swindall, who left office in disgrace in the late eighties.

The Republican handlers are under the illusion that voters actually care about their social conservative wedge issues when the car is out of gas, the pumps are dry (as they are in the southeast), the house is getting foreclosed on, and the 401(k) is more like a 179(B). One suspects that an unemployed individual on the edge of returning to the land of the renter would be happy to host the most flamboyant Gay wedding in history on his lawn, if it means he has a job and gets to keep his lawn.

McCain, the ever-aware pilot, is much too savvy a politician to allow himself to come off as the acrimonious, infirm elderly man we saw on Friday night. The rambling rants were characteristic of the misanthropic message of a party which is willing to sacrifice a war hero who did not always hew closely to a party line which makes no allowances for living up to Christian doctrine which it finds inconvenient.

The Republican party wants to sell the voter upon experience. They want the voter to know that Barack Obama is naive and doesn't get it.

Experienced military leaders lost 4000+ American servicepeople, while the inexperienced Barack Obama was of the opinion that they should not have been committed. The best we can hope for is a draw, and now Saddam isn't there to occupy the Iranians. Oh yeah, by the way, WHERE THE HELL IS BIN LADEN?

McCain, and Republicans "got it," that lax oversight in the housing and financial sectors would be great for the economy because we can trust bankers and lawyers to police themselves. Highly motivated financial people can be counted upon to behave diligently and ethically, right?

And there was nothing AT ALL naive about tax breaks that allowed manufacturing jobs to be shipped overseas at a rate that very nearly replicates the giant sucking sound that H. Ross Perot counseled the American public about in 1992-but he never imagined that the slurping would come from the People's Republic of China instead of Mexico...and the Chinese would be holding a trillion dollars of American debt as a result.

Very well, then, maybe experienced, non-naive people who "get it" aren't all that they are advertised to be. So the Republicans are going to bring out their own inexperienced, naive person who doesn't get it. Governor Sarah Palin makes Dan Quayle look like Shakespeare.

One hopes that the awkward interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric were a tactic to lower expectations for the debate with Joe Biden. Regrettably, one suspects that Governor Palin is as dumb as a bag of hammers. However, she is much easier on the eyes.

Those who had a complaint about Senator Clinton were less motivated by her genitalia than they were by a perception that the Senator from New York is a bit too tempestuous to be effective in the presidency. Governor Palin does exhibit a level of tempestuousness, but her targets are satirists and those who question her qualifications.

One would guess that "Saturday Night Live" is not shown in Alaska at all, but a quick perusal of the website for Palin's former employer, KTUU in Anchorage, indicated that it is an NBC affiliate. Did she expect her loud arrival on the national stage to pass unnoticed by parodists in New York? Making fun of public figures has been part of the program's description since 1975, and the producers and network know their audience is more likely to give Obama a pass.

A cagey tweener could have seen that coming. Why didn't the 44-year-old? Oh, she talks about having gotten into politics by moving from the PTA, but my math indicates that her oldest child must have started kindergarten at 18 months old.

Getting back to the experience issue, (and away from a rant fueled by lust for Tina Fey), if her experience running a city of any size were characterized by some spectacular accomplishment or demonstration of competence one may be inclined to listen. Giuliani's miracle in New York comes immediately to mind.

However, we are presented with a small town which shares many of the same difficulties of towns its size nationwide. Adding the state into the mix, one wishes for a record which reflects the kind of forward-thinking leadership that puts a state in good stead for future prosperity. Zell Miller's helmsmanship in Georgia is a perfectly fine example of a man who did an outstanding job of running a state that cannot simply dig a hole and have it puke up oil.

Regrets to Governor Palin, but without the North Slope, Alaska would be likened to the Mississippi of the Arctic. That is not entirely fair. Mississippi would be justified in being insulted by the comparison.

So the Republican Party now expects us to put on the Emperor's New Clothes, and accept that this is the best ticket that they can offer. No. Mike Huckabee has spoken eloquently about the Republican lack of political prowess this year.

And he is the next Republican who has a chance of ever being elected president.