The Bogeyman

If I were the Democratic candidate for president, and it was September and my opponent were John McCain, here's the ad I would run: A street in the middle east. Some cute children playing games. Some women carrying groceries. A dog trotting by. Back to the children. Cut to McCain singing "Bomb bomb bomb Iran", but speeded up a little, to remind people how crazy he is. Cut back to Iranian street scene. The dog joins the children. Blow them up. Ever see "Failsafe"? That's what happens at the end. The last few scenes are of folks minding their own business on the streets of New York. Then they're gone.

The next ad I would run would be film clips of American soldiers in Iraq, dead, dismembered, dying. Cut to Walter Reed Army Hospital. American soldiers, men and women, struggling with their injuries. Cut to funeral for American soldier. Cut to John McCain, smiling, welcoming a hundred years of war in Iraq.

But I'm not going to be the candidate, and, according to Bill Clinton, if Hillary is the candidate, she is going to sell us out, because "she and John McCain are very close," and they've agreed to use the campaign to put the voters to sleep so that they can get on with consolidating the military-industrial corporate base of the US government.

The press concedes the race to McCain already. In Sunday's column (which I read in the International Herald Tribune, my Times substitute), Frank Rich maintains that Bill Clinton's surge into the primaries will bring him serious trouble from the Republican noise machine, as they rake up one indiscretion after another and throw them in Billary's face. If McCain wins the nomination, according to Rich, the Clintons can't beat him because when Bill and Hillary were in law school, McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and because Independents like McCain. Apparently, while everyone will rake up Billary's past, McCain's will be allowed to slumber peacefully, and, with the connivance of the swooning press, the US will get to elect a crackpot.

You may remember that in May of 2006, McCain stumbled into the commencement exercises at the New School in New York City, intending to give the same speech to those lefties as he had given to the graduating class of Liberty University, when what to his wondering eyes should appear but a 22-year-old girl who gave him a sound talking-to.

Those kids sent the old man home with his tail between his legs. I would show that, too, in my campaign ads.

Any Republican president would be a disaster, but McCain would be the biggest disaster of all, because, both by who he is and what he professes, he encourages the US, as Reagan did, to engage in sentimental, nostalgic wishful thinking about the effects of American "goodness" and "power". The nation, which is at last waking up to the disasters of the last twenty-eight years--the disasters of the "free market" and "making the world safe for democracy" as a cover for ruthless exploitation of all natural resources no matter where they are and who owns them--would succumb the fantasy again, at least long enough for those disasters to be compounded and rendered absolutely unfixable. McCain is a walking delusion--that we really are brave, that we meant well, that mistakes were made but the policies themselves were sound. McCain reassures us that we weren't so bad after all, when we were. We can't come to terms with why the US is in the pickle it is in without consigning McCain to the dustheap.

The majority of Americans do not want to stay in Iraq. The majority of Americans think that policies McCain supports take the country in "the wrong direction". The majority of Americans do not agree with McCain, but Billary and the press are already telling us that, once he is the nominee, they aren't going to touch him. They are going to let him break the army. They are going to let him break the bank. They are going to let him continue and expand the Bush presidency, because he's a war hero, and if a war hero likes a war, then nobody else's opinion matters.

Comments

[itmaybetoolate]

Folks, we are screwed!

[ScooterLiddy]

Jane: As always, you have nailed the zeitgeist. The United States of Amnesia will sleepwalk to a John McCain presidency and the Empire will creap to resounding disaster and implosion. We deserve as much. Time to find a new country. Americans are too stupid to survive.

[flatus]

Isn't heroism the result of an act of bravery taken by choice? In this light, how is being shot down and imprisoned heroic?

[Puller58]

Here's where the point of this mess comes clear. Take one view: McCain wins with a republican takeover of congress. Iran gets attacked and the american public gets dumped on. Second view: McCain wins and the dems hang on. Iran still gets attacked and the dumping gets a sugar coating. Either way, the foreign policy trajectory does not change. Now even if Hillary wins, is it a sure thing that the US does not attack Iran? Who knows?

[degjack]

This post by LewisWalsh in these blogs deserves repeating. It is dead on about McCain and is worth reading again:

"The rationale behind the recognition of John McCain as a military hero eludes me. I give him high marks for service to country, but hero? I think that we have stretched the term hero a little too far. In other cultures, captured military are not necessarily thought of as heroic since it is not something that is optional. Conduct during imprisonment can be honorable, but let start using designations such as hero with greater accuracy.
John McCain has many characteristics that make him unacceptable as the person to be in charge of a vast military establishment. Among them is his age; his obvious infirmities; his fondness for military solutions; his doggedness in the face of overwhelming contrary opinion. Consensus is what brings about the best decisions. His presidency will not lean towards consensus building but, as one would expect of the military mind, he will rule by directive. He is certainly not a Dwight Eisenhower.
President Bush is of minor intellectual ability, but he is a healthy man who has been able to endure the riggers of his position. John McCain, though glib, is also of minor intellectual ability. In addition, a problem for the country is that he could physically crumble under the strain of the presidency and produce many bad decisions. I believe that John McCain is the most dangerous of any of the candidates of any party.
John McCain enjoys inordinately good press; they have not examined his record for ethical conduct, nor have they taken a serious look at his physical fitness for the job."

[degjack]

Thank you for expressing my thoughts so well.
McCain insinuates war in Iraq for the rest of our lives and of the money Bush didn't squander in Iraq he pledges to finish wasting -- so what do people do? Yawn, then go out and vote for him in the primary to ENSURE he completes the destruction of this nation. Why? Well, because it's way too much trouble to select another viable Republican candidate because we can't be so bothered, you know?
Americans are a bunch of very confused people.
It's quite sad.

[crisscross]

Why does the press always refer to McCain as
a war hero? All he did was drop bombs and napalm
on civilian and military targets then back to
the officers club for cocktails. How brave can
you be?

[bumpersticker]

We see the personality we want to avoid in the Bush SOU address.

Economy - lip service
Environment - lip service
Education - lip service
Bogeyman - Yee-haw, Slim Pickens riding an H-bomb, [queue Journey singing "Won't Stop"]
Healthcare - lip service
Genocide - lip service

McCain track this script way too closely

[sa]

in america (the shining beacon on the hill),
if you are busted illegally -
say the cop uses illawful actions
such as pulls you over for no reason,
or suddenly searches your home,
and finds weed,
they throw out the charges.

america invaded iraq illegally.
yet sadaam was hung for it.

i'm not a sadaam apologist,
but the argument that "the world
is a better place without sadaam"
is tiresome.
bush didn't go to congress or the world,
with "let's get rid of sadaam."

there is a strong argument,
especially for the americans that could
have used the trillions in social services,
that the world would be a better
place without george w. bush.

it very well may be that bush has brought
more hate, destruction and troubles
to the world, than has sadaam huessin.

one thing is for certain,
bush would never have had the dignity
of sadaam huessin in the gallows.

[nancytheragingliberal]

Thank you for this wonderful Post. McCain is truly crazy, but the repubs. are desperate and this sad sack is their idea of semi-"normal." We must not have any repub. for President again. Why? Two words.....Supreme Court.

[rob112552]

If we ran the ads you describe TODAY, forget John McCain, the war would be over in twelve days!

[bipolar2]

** Recessional: the Rotting Legacy of 43 to 44 **

Better-defined imperial borders.
Pox Americana harassed at every frontier supply line.

Richer rich, poorer poor, dying middle.
Tyrannical social control at home erases living memory of a democratic republic.

Those wretched ephemeral babblers lusting after the purple in '08 notwithstanding, a slide into the abyss can only be slowed, not reversed.

No reforming political force yet exists which can not be enslaved or aborted by MIXR: the military-investor & xian-right.

Little Bush, our postmodern Caligula, vigorously catalyzes the rot of Empire. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

"Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make demented."

bipolar2
© 2008

[JulieSA]

I see that my comments have been scrubbed--down the memory hole. All I said is that you hate America, which as anyone can see by reading your post, is true.

That's fine. It's your blog. But the other HuffPo bloggers do not scrub my comments. You are the the least tolerant of other points of view of all the HP bloggers.

[tbone99]

Unfortunately ads showing mideastern women & children being bombed, and wounded American soldiers would only gain more votes for McCain since today, every Arab is a terrorist and every enlistee a hero.We have must have enemies to be heroes.

America must be on a mission to be well... America. Its the founding myth, starting with the native american genocide...its what gets votes.

However - I think a money clock ticking out the millions per second might actually reach some people.If there's one thing that gets an American where it hurts- its money.

[fisharefreinds]

He is not a "War Hero," but a war survivor, there is a difference. He deserves the same attribution as those who have survived WWII, the Holocust, Korea. But simply surviving does not a hero make. Today, we are all survivors. We cannot continue to elect leaders this way; Hitler was a war survivor too. Bush had no war experience but having experience or not having it is not the point is it? Today McCain is Bush in drag. Franklin Roosevelt had no war experience but he had beliefs. Do you need to survive the Gates of Hell in order to recognize and fight it? We have been deceived by Bush and company into this war. We were deceived by Clinton before him. Deceived Into the nightmare of the erosion of our civil liberties; the wholesale giveaway to the Corporations of our political system; and there is no one man to hold accountable now. People are desperate for work. People fear losing their homes, their savings, and really fear how they will be able to pay for their children's future. Who among us is ready to fight back. Where do we go? Obama, Edwards, Hillary, do any of us really believe Democracy in America is more then "fear and fear itself?" We are going to have to save ourselves people beacause our leaders will not. Each individual! As always, thank you Jane Smiley