I am writing this from an undisclosed location. I understand from the shortwave broadcasts I can still receive that the Internet is still operating in various parts of the country and much of the rest of the world, so I am smuggling this out by various means in hopes that one copy will reach someone who can post it. I think that we owe it to history to have a frank assessment published somewhere, for however long, of President McCain's first 100 days in office.
My purpose here is not to rehash the election results themselves; that happened amply in the weeks between November 4 and January 20. I take no position between those who say that McCain's winning each of Ohio, Indiana, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, and New Hampshire by identical 666 vote margins was proof of a conspiracy so brazen that they didn't need to hide it versus its being proof of malign cosmic forces at work. Either way, Obama still had a 270 Electoral College vote majority. It was the public extortion of the electors from Nevada (including showing part of one FBI sting sex tape) to swing the margin back to McCain, over the quiet objection of Sen. Harry Reid, that I mark as the true beginning of the bad times.
Of course, now all of that seems like so long ago.
Some think it is unfair to blame Senator McCain for the troubles of his first hundred days, given the collapse of the economy in the waning months of the Bush Administration, but it stands to reason that if he had not gotten the Electoral College to reverse the popular vote things would have been different. During the period that everyone thought that Obama would take office, McCain did keep mumbling about he was conducting his own transition preparations as well, but the press (unbelievably, in retrospect) paid him little attention. A stark, if not noble, exception was Fox News, which paid no attention to Obama during this period except to make circling finger gestures next to his head when they mentioned his own transition efforts, while crossing their eyes and wagging their tongues to indicate that he was insane. Perhaps they knew something that the rest of us didn't -- but the on-air suicide of Shepard Smith once the Electoral College votes were read suggests otherwise.
It was to a rictus-grinning Smith, in fact, that McCain had issued what became the most mocked comment during this period when he finally said that he was "just gonna wing the transition," which he said gave him the adrenaline to get the job done. No doubt this weighed heavily on investors' minds when, a day after McCain had reversed positions a tenth time to say that he would now let all people and companies in debt fail, the Dow Jones Industrial average lost 2/3 of its value in one day once the success of McCain's Electoral College gambit became evident. By Inauguration Day, the Dow was scraping along at about 2400, while Republicans attacked Democrats for using it as some measuring stick of Presidential performance.
It was into this milieu that McCain stepped during his Inauguration, which is best known for the quote "Well, I guess we got nowhere to go but up! Henh!" McCain's speech had apparently ended prematurely with a coughing and hacking fit that let to him waving the cameras away as he staggered from the stage, the first of many physical ailments that would come to characterize his first 100 days. Vice President Palin stepped in and began what appeared to be a prepared address about what she would do as President "given recent unfortunate events" and appeared visibly stunned when informed that McCain was feeling better, stalking away from the podium with clenched jaws.
Extremely nervous-seeming Senate Democrats approved of McCain's reappointment of all of Bush's Cabinet appointees and awaited his proposal to address the financial crisis. McCain sent forth no such legislation, instead proclaiming his intention to "just see what happens." The collapse of the Big Three Automakers and most banks quickly ensued, which McCain blamed on Obama for "stealing his thunder" during the transition period during which "I could've calmed some nerves."
McCain did show some bipartisan spirit, however, in appointing exiting Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to be his good government Czar. Senate Democrats only blocked this appointment when it became clear that Blagojevich had not paid his taxes, ever -- not so much as a dime.
The Arizona Cardinals defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLIII when Steeler quarterback Ben Rothlisberger was led from the field hooded and in chains at the end of the first half, his tortured screams echoing from a PA system in the team's locker room during most of the second half. Steelers receiver Santonio Holmes was controversially declared an enemy combatant and tackled by Secret Service agents during the game's final drive, securing the victory for McCain's home state.
The following day, McCain Cabinet officials announced brazenly that none of them had paid their taxes either, but that they weren't going anywhere. It was also revealed that McCain had missed the last part of the game based on a bad reaction to some contaminant in his food, but that he had somehow once again survived. Vice President Palin was later captured in what became a viral video twisting her ankle after implanting her pointy-toed shoe in the backside of the Secret Service agent who had delivered McCain's hot dogs.
While hunger was turning into starvation domestically in increasing portions of the country, international matters gained importance when McCain responded to the collision of Iridium Satellite LLC's Iridium 33 and Russia's Kosmos-2251 by declaring near-Earth-orbit an American Protectorate and demanding that other countries "get their crap away from our satellites." McCain had NASA shoot down some Russian and Chinese satellites, leading to the rest of the world to freeze American overseas accounts as reparations, pursuant to international treaty, leading McCain to famously ask "what the hell do you mean by "international treaty?" The countries backed off only after they were blamed, without much evident foundation, for a missile attack on the Oval Office that apparently came from elsewhere on White House grounds, which did not injure McCain only because he had gone to bed before 4 p.m.
A week later, Sean Penn was arrested and hustled out of the auditorium as he went onstage to collect the Best Actor Award, which instead was given to Mickey Rourke. Penn has not been heard from since. Public outrage was quellled as people were distracted by the closure of fully 2/3 of the hospital emergency rooms in the nation. Faith healing burgeoned.
During the next week, McCain announced that he would be sending five million more troops into Iraq. Military recruiting offices were nevertheless swamped from people trying to evade the roving gangs of automatic weapon wielding and suit-clad thugs on huge motorcycles, who had begun shooting people for sport while screaming "Cull the Herd!" -- an activity that came to be known as "Going Gevalt."
Coincidentally, this was the lead story in the New York Times the day it closed its doors, leaving only the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times publishing paper editions in the U.S. McCain responded by calling for enactment of the Bird, Cat and Dog Protection Act, requiring all households to subscribe to one of the two newspapers because they had or might someday have pets.
Vice President Palin was temporarily detained after rushing at McCain with a spear, her assault foiled only when she was tripped by a fleeing Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. She was released only after convincing McCain that this was an acceptable practice in Alaska, designed to prove the fortitude of one's host.
Slavery was reinstituted in the South, but it was not based on race but rather on a complex equation based on the free or slave status of one's great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents. The "Unto the Tenth Generation Act" was passed without Democratic votes, as Democrats no longer considered it safe to appear in Congress personally. The Courts -- "in their wisdom! Henh!" as McCain put it -- refused to intervene in the Constitutional problems, nor would they order the release of Democratic Congress Members' families.
Former Vice President Cheney appeared on a Fox News special in which he argued that we as a nation could no longer maintain "so-called civilized opposition" to the practice of cannibalism. Gnawing with gusto on the femur of what was later revealed to be New Jersey Congressman Rush Holt, Cheney told interviewer Brit Hume, who demurely agreed to nibble on one of the Congressman's ears, that this was a new era and times were tough and we had to get tougher along with them. The interview was blocked out by Fox News just as Cheney was preparing to show Hume the contents of his "man-sized freezer."
Outraged reaction to the Cheney interview -- and McCain's seemingly confused and noncommital reaction that "Dick is a smart guy, he knows his stuff, everyone knows that" -- was muted due to two factors: (1) declaration of martial law in the Pacific Coast, New York, and New England and (2) continuous cable coverage of the disappearance of Vice President Palin's plane into erupting volcano Mt. Redoubt, where McCain unhelpfully said only that she had been sent on a "diplomatic and/or scientific mission."
Surprisingly, even the advent of witch burnings (tied into the new Fox show, "Will She Float?" and the conversion of bankrupt NBC into an all-religious network did not mollify McCain's backers in the business community, who were upset at their companies going bankrupt, being bought by low-status global economic powers such as Andorra and Malawi, and their executives being hunted down in the street and burned alive in huge pyres. McCain convened a panel of economic advisors who told him that the situation could best be handled by "winging it" and invading another Muslim country.
It was here where McCain lucked out, after a fashion, as Somali pirates took on a ship flying the American flag. McCain responded by dropping a small nuclear bomb on the pirate ship, followed by a series of nuclear blasts that, combined with the continuing effects of global warming, actually submerged what had previously been known as "The Horn of Africa" into the ocean, turning it into something closer to "The Sawed-Off Bump Like in Hellboy of Africa." Radioactive seawater droplets drifted over Yemen, leading to a startling upsurge in anti-U.S. Yemeni terrorism and to McCain's confused press conference where he complained that he didn't even know what a Yemen was and had never attacked them. (He promptly did so, possibly to reduce his sense of confusion.) Mexico and Canada closed their borders to the United States, turning away literally millions of desperate refugees.
Congress considered legislation to ban same-sex encouraging or comforting touching as well as interparty marriage. At a news conference, McCain professed to be unaware of this initiative from his own Secretary of Saviour Relations. He appeared to be brooding, not even appearing to exult in public after the nuclear destruction of North Korea, possibly due to the ensuing nuclear destruction of South Korea. (McCain's joke about "eliminating trade competition from East Asia -- henh!" fell very, very flat.) The advent of the swine flu and -- given the failure of the states to be able to provide basic sanitation services, typhoid, diptheria, tuberculosis, and other diseases -- supposedly had left McCain increasingly morose.
Yesterday, towards the end of his first 100 days, McCain had Palin declared legally dead and, reviewing the devastation that was been wrought, said that he would be appointing his former opponent Barack Obama to replace her, "with a Cheney-sized portfolio of responsibilities." Senate Democrats have pledged to appear again in session in order to approve him. Republicans, panicked at the descent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average below the "magic 100" threshold, have agreed to see whether he can come up with any better ideas.
The streets are quiet, of course, as they have been for two months now. Still, the whispered consesnsus is that, with Cheney now able to farm tasks out to the man he called "Vice-President Designate That One," things are finally looking up.