The morning after Barak Obama shed his nice guy image and let the Chicago politician out, John McCain suddenly pulled off the greatest flip flop of the campaign to date. He didn't change his stance on much this time, only his long-time facade/tradition of building friendships (the inner McCain desperately wanted to get good ol' Joey Lieberman on the ticket, I'm sure of that) and standing by them. No, he changed the entire positioning of the candidates. The morning after Barak essentially said "Bring It! Bring your swift boating friends to attack the Muslim Who Hates America, you hot headed, senile, old f@*&!", John turned into the Democrats. He didn't utter as much as a peep about being senile, or about not knowing anything about his houses. He hardly responded at all to the challenge.
Instead, he introduced perhaps the most unqualified Veep nomination in the history of the free world. There have been kitchen appliances more qualified for vice president than Sarah Palin. She's a caricature straight out of SNL, a little Christian Soccer (er, hockey?) Mom, with the voice of a South Park character and just good looking enough to arouse comments inside every man (and some women's) thoughts. She is a Stepford wife, a PTA girl who took on the government, a Disney film, or perhaps a brunette spin-off of Legally Blonde. When she got behind the microphone, she called the office of the Vice Presidency the highest office in the land. She praised Geraldine Ferraro. She praised Hillary Clinton. Um. The Republicans are praising Hillary Clinton? Isn't that like a vegan extolling the pleasures of a French Dip? Less than a month ago, on CNBC, she stated she didn't know what the Vice President does? This is the most blatant insult to the feminist movement, to the Clinton supporters, and to whatever historical spins the media is currently putting on this race. She's a steadfast hunting carnivore supreme who opposes things like rape exceptions to abortion bans. Sounds like a great choice to go after the liberal Hillarite women.
It was brilliant. It was the smartest political move that John McCain has ever made. For every Hillary Clinton supporter that Hillary has "Nadered" out of the Democratic column, there's also now five good little Christian women in the suburbs who will put down their cookie sheet and turn off the 700 club and go vote for Sarah Palan. She's not a replacement of Hillary, she's a strange, anti-Hillary. She's a homemaker that somehow ended up as a governer of an unimposing state. She's got a gaggle of kids (one with down syndrome!) and a rough and rugged fisherman husband with one of those phantom goatees. She's got more minivans than McCain's got houses. She was a beauty queen of a podunk town, but not Miss Alaska. She played basketball in her little high school, but not scholarship good. She has a Bachelor's in journalism from the University of Idaho - a degree that's about two ticks above a G.E.D., which she used to propel herself into a small market news station job. She is not a super-over achiever like Hillary. She's what a First Lady should be to many people, and ergo, even if she's never been a First Lady, she's the First Lady the conservative house wife wants to see as Vice President. She the consumate dream of the bored stay at home wife, a little success without too much pressure. She's an Oxygen Exclusive Premiere. And for people that don't read politics, for women that want to "break a glass ceiling" without being tied to evil liberals like Nancy "Left Coast" Pelosi or Hillary "Pantsuit" Clinton, two communists if there ever were any in our government, she's perfect.
John McCain is counting on the American tradition of putting as much thought into a presidential vote as into where we stop for dinner afterwards. That Americans only read headlines and listen to soundbites. That the least common denominator wins. And even more so, whatever bad press comes from Joe Biden roughing up a woman in the debates... uh, wait, that's not even a problem with his target audience. That's in addition to the best thing ever. If you were tooling around the cable stations on Friday, Barak's Big Challenge was relegated to footnotes as the pundits furiously scrapped around to find out who Sarah Palin was. The "Barak Bump", which the McCain camp estimated to be up to fifteen points (and with hurricane coverage vying for time with the Republican Convention, a fifteen that may have been unrecoverable), was negated. John played a trump, he took the big chance. He cashed in all his Risk cards and went for it. The Maverick dodged Barak's Challenge, and in Obama-like fashion, changed the subject. Just as Barak was about to war over the middle, McCain dropped the fight and swooped on the Republican Base, the Religious Right, and amazingly enough, Suburban Church Ladies. He Baraked Barak.
There's only one downside: what if (I'll skip the prerequisite prayer to God) John McCain becomes incapacitated? Well, he'll be incapacitated, and it's not his problem anymore, is it?
