State of the Union – David Ford
Okay, I promised myself no more politics for awhile, but I just can’t help myself. If you don’t care about this stuff, don’t worry – I’ll be posting something normal and milquetoast within the hour.
But before I do, let me just express my general state of dismay. The last two weeks of this presidential campaign have pushed me quickly through the stages of confusion, disbelief, frustration, irritation, and outright depression. Our country can’t really be this stupid, this obsessed with absolute pablum, this completely dismissive of basic and fundamental questions like “how would each side govern?” “what issues will they focus on?” and “is there any reason to believe a single word that comes out of their mouths?” Can it?
If the best we can do is pretend there’s a controversy over the lipstick on a pig reference (it’s a common phrase, it was about their [lack of] an economic plan, McCain himself said it about Hillary, etc.) or a debate about whether Palin said “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere or earmarks (she didn’t, like at all), then I really do have to wonder. Any country that can become so thoroughly entangled in this idiocy is ripe for the picking. A few years ago I commented about the thoroughly oppressive social structures of Edwardian England as symbolic of the larger decline of the British Empire:
It’s a small microcosm, to be sure, but seeing just how obsessed these people were with maintaing strict social hiearchies, with adhering to rules of etiquette, and with honoring their past reveals a lot about the state of the British Empire. … Obsession with etiquette did not cause British power to collapse, but it certainly helped things along. When they could have devoted their efforts to expanding their power, developing new technologies, modernizing the economic and political environment, instead they strove for stagnation.
I can’t help but wonder if future historians will look back on the early years of the 21st century as the time when America conclusively began to collapse in upon itself.
A country which seems thoroughly committed to choosing its leaders using the framework of high school elections is one that has grown tired of its immense power. A country where (if the election was held today) would elect a vice-president who literally has not even heard of the Bush Doctrine is one which appears uninterested in righting its course.
It’s not that Palin is stupid, or constitutionally incapable of running the country (though given what I’ve seen so far, I’d really prefer to give her a couple more years to get up to speed), or the worst in the world on earmarks (she’s bad, but honestly who really cares?). Neither is it that McCain has bad policy ideas (though he does). It’s that they don’t even seem interested in trying to rectify or resolve those issues. They’re going to keep repeating the lies despite getting called on it because they actively want the election to be about this stuff instead of about real issues.
The only conclusion I can draw is that, for all we’ve heard about “honor” and “seriousness,” McCain is running one of the least honorable, least serious campaigns for major office in American history.
And yet no one seems to care.
UPDATE: And don’t even get me started about the interview. I’ll just defer to publius on that one.