So, tonight we're gonna party like it's 1999.
Mainly because I still liked John McCain then, before he caved in defeat to the Karl Rove machine and spent the last eight years in step with his party's crazies in hopes that he'd be back in action tonight. Unfortunately, his moment has passed and the Republican philosophy has failed, at home and abroad.
What America does he live in, where he can say that equal access to education has been achieved? What world does he inhabit, where we've dealt Al-Qaeda a major blow? How can he call himself a Maverick while co-opting his opponent's "change" messaging, particularly as a member of the incumbent party?
It was frustrating listening to him tonight, and not because he's a champion of conservative ideology. (It doesn't make me angry when the Republican platform is presented thoughtfully, as opposed to "Drill, baby, drill.") It was frustrating because he once was a great leader with the ability to unify the parties, but now he's ceded that credibility to Little Miss Pit Bull and a slew of divisive others. I know conventions are fraternity parties and secret handshakes and winks are standard operating procedure, but the RNC programming did little to convince me that a McCain presidency will be an innovative departure from the last eight years. (And I vehemently resist the BO camp's over-simplified "Third Bush Term" moniker, so that's saying a lot.) Palin was a short-term mastermind move that will keep him competitive in the general election, but McCain is going to have to live with the extremity of his gamble.
What undecided voters are looking at the prospect of the return of the Cold War, invading Iran, a "mental recession," offshore drilling, teaching Creationism in schools, overturning Roe vs. Wade, a pregnant 17-year-old...and racing to the polls to vote Republican?
We'd all love to put aside partisanship and work together to solve issues we have in common, but both conventions illustrated that the divide runs much deeper than lip service. As Barack noted in Denver: The Republican strategy of top-down resource management has failed, and right now the American people who believe in equality of opportunity have rallied together in a grassroots movement that is going to push our future from the bottom up.
I would love to fight with John McCain, as he passionately implored me to. But as I absorbed the unbridled patriotism and teared up listening to him tell the sincerely heroic story of mentally defeating the prison guards in Hanoi with his belief in the country that saved him, I wondered how this remarkably tough man could succumb to the pressure of political posturing.
Sadly, we can't move this country forward on John McCain's previous acts of courageous service, we have to acknowledge who he is now. And this week, he showed us that the Straight Talk Express veered permanently off course somewhere in Crawford, Texas.