Did anyone get the feeling that, despite turning in the better performance, Obama lost ground in the last debate? What accounts for this feeling?
Perhaps it's that I rely on acupuncture to control my anxiety, rather than the large-animal tranquilizers my physician recommends. (But if I went with the tranquilizer, its complete control of my neuroses would make it impossible for me to write these columns. A double-bind.)
But I think the real source of my concern was Bob Schieffer ceding what seemed like five minutes for Obama to explain that he once sat on a panel with a kick-ass professor who did something crazy in the Sixties. Like, who hasn't sat on a panel (or in a classroom) with a really cool professor who did something crazy in the Sixties? If this is a disqualification, a lot of great people can never be President, which would be sad.
Hopefully my political instincts are, as usual, completely off-track. But I worry that this Ayers and Acorn nonsense will threaten the Obama landslide I am counting on to send the radical right back to its Appalachian river shacks and Pentecostal churches, and out of national politics for another century.
McCain's accusations about Ayers and Acorn are really another example of the charming tendency of our nation to slip occasionally into mass hysteria. The right scare words and we're screaming for the exits. The tendency enjoyed its heyday in the McCarthy era. Now McCain has, in his last and most desperate campaign move, exhumed the sad ghost of that dark time.
Way to go, Mr. American War Hero! Way to demonstrate your courage under fire! This is the President we want in a time of national crisis: the man who will happily scare the bejesus out of us for personal political gain.
At no level does this Ayers/Acorn stuff make any sense. Consider, for example, that McCain is connecting Obama to America's second-friendliest nut. C'mon people! The humble acorn, with its rounded top and curved stem, is the favorite food of Alvin and the Chipmunks. Only the peanut is more friendly. (And the peanut is one friendly nut. Every year peanuts kill untold thousands by sending them into anaphylactic shock and death. And yet everyone still loves peanuts. That's one popular nut.)
I know, ACORN is a "community organization," the kind of shadow organization McCain and Palin have taught us to fear. What goes on in these "community organizations"? Do they discuss neighborhood problems? Gather blankets for the homeless? Hold bake sales? The truth is, we don't really know.
But we know what ACORN did. It...wait for it...registered American citizens to vote! Yes, ACORN is a proponent of that great enemy of democracy: voter enfranchisement.
But that's not the worst of it. The worst of it is that some of those voters may have (are you sitting down?) submitted misspelled or partially illegible voter registration forms!
Noooooo! Say it isn't so! How can the fabric of our democracy ever be repaired?
Personally, I think we should send these ACORN people packing. If they can't gather 1.2 million letter-perfect voter registrations, they should not be allowed to hold small meetings in the basements of community centers.
But it gets worse. Someone, it is said, filled out a registration card for Mickey Mouse. So this, apparently, is John McCain's worst nightmare--a grown man in a mouse costume attempting to vote on election day. A Giant Mouse Man, with puffy hands and creepy non-blinking eyes, voting for president. I, for one, wish John McCain had a better imagination, and could conjure something more frightening. It's the end of his
political career, after all. Surely he can come up with something better? But no, I guess the specter of Mickey Mouse standing, slightly bored, in a long line at some public school is all he's got. It is funny, though, that the man who will be remembered for his Mickey-Mouse running mate is worried that Mickey himself will show up to vote against her. That says a lot about the state of the McCain campaign, I think.
Truthfully, I do think this will all turn out OK. The Supreme Court only took a few days to figure out that this Acorn nonsense really is Bush league. They even said so in their opinion. They said it in legalese, but when the Supreme Court says you have no standing, believe me, you've hit bottom. Usually any fruitcake can get into federal court if he pleads his case correctly. So that development alone was a refreshing change.
But I think Obama should call McCain's tactic for what it is--a dishonorable attempt to tear him down by alleging his false "association" with a sinister crowd, just as Senator McCarthy ruined the lives of so many patriotic Americans by alleging their false association with Russian Communists.
And Barack, if you want to use any of my Acorn and Mickey Mouse jokes, you are welcome to them.
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