McCain's '2013' Platform Scoffed At, Termed 'Magic Carpet Ride'

There have been many times in my life when, faced with a mountain of work and pressing deadlines, I fantasized about using a time machine to travel to some future date when all of the work I needed to get done would be completed, somehow. Until today, these were just the idle dreams of an often overworked college student. Now, however, we come to understand that this fantasy is, basically, John McCain's vision of his own presidency.

Basically, McCain's announced plan for America involves a) him getting elected President, after which b) some stuff will happen, leading to c) all of America's problems being solved. For a guy who recently declared he was a man of action, he's reverted to a state of confounding passivity, promising a magical bag of outcomes without offering any idea how they will be achieved, outside of, perhaps, further episodes of intense wishful thinking performed in front of the press corps. Maybe McCain's found that "magic wand" that Bush was looking for!

Some of McCain's statements are just remarkably silly. "The Iraq War has been won." How did that happen? The nation has had "several years of robust growth." Uhm, okay! "The increase in actionable intelligence that the counterinsurgency produced led to the capture or death of Osama bin Laden, and his chief lieutenants." The counterinsurgency in Iraq is going to yield actionable intelligence on a terrorist network that has nothing to do with the Iraq insurgency? That is going to be a neat trick!

Most galling of all, is this:

A "League of Democracies" has supplanted a failed United Nations to apply sanctions to the Sudanese government and halt genocide in Darfur.

So, people of Darfur, if you could just, you know, hang on until the year 2013, we'll be sending the reanimated corpse of the Wilson administration to save you!

One reporter wasn't having it, and called McCain's platform a "magic carpet ride." McCain disputed this reading of his awesome plan to sit back and watch the world change, saying: "I don't think it has anything to do with fantasy, I think it has everything to do with setting goals and achieving.'' Sounds like the McCain presidency will ensure that the manufacture of "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banners will be a key sector for economic growth. For China, anyway.