People have been jumping all over John McCain's forgetting of how many homes he owns, and rightfully so - the idea of a man who can't even remember his own assets being the guy who'll fix the American economy is just outright laughable. I'm all for ripping on McCain on this front, or really on any front. But while it's good to take from this a sense of just how out of touch McCain is about the real conditions of the economy, there's another thing we should take away from this - and a disturbing pattern that raises questions about whether this man is fit to hold the office of leader of the free world.
I don't necessarily want to ascribe this to age, but McCain seems far too often not to know where he is or what's going on around him. Time and time again he's deferred to his advisors to answer questions that should be simple. He couldn't figure out his own position on Viagra; he's needed Joe Lieberman to hover over his shoulder, whispering simple bits of foreign policy common knowledge to him; he forgot that Czechoslovakia hasn't existed for sixteen years. Even when asked about things in his personal life that he really should know off the top of his head, like how many estates he owns and what kind of car he drives, McCain has had to defer to his staff for the answer. It seems that every second day, he has one of these moments where he forgets something simple and has to be reminded or told what his position is.
Don't people find this profoundly disturbing, that a major party candidate for President is essentially going around in a thick fog, always beholden to the prompting of his advisers?
There was a time, back around the turn of the millennium, when I thought John McCain was a pretty swell Republican, but the McCain of 2008 bears little resemblance to that man. At heart he's probably a decent enough guy, but how he's conducted himself now paints a deeply disturbing picture. You can tell a lot about how a man would govern by how he conducts his campaign, and from the looks of things one can only conclude that McCain would be a weak leader, controlled by a cabal of corrupt advisers whispering in his ear and steering him towards positions they want, while playing the POW card liberally to give the illusion of strength. This is a man who has demonstrated numerous times that he often draws mental blanks and forgets simple things, and for such a man to surround himself with lobbyists and the likes of Karl Rove is a recipe for disaster.
Does America really want a chronically foggy-headed president with a cabal of corrupt Washington power brokers whispering in his ear? Is the allure of the man's past as a war hero really so great as to blind people from the sad reality of what McCain has become? And make no mistake, it is sad to see.
While you can read into the houses gaffe and take away that John McCain is an elite rich guy who's out of touch with real working people, the real subtext to take away is that John McCain is out of touch with reality in the most disturbing way possible. After eight years of Bush, the global economy is in ruins, America is mired in an unwinnable civil war, gas prices are up, housing prices are down, and the middle class is in real danger of collapse. As you've probably guessed, I'm Canadian - but even up here, I'm affected, because our nations are so very close that when you guys suffer, so do we. When America's quality of life drops, so does mine. That's why I'm following this election and why I'm worried that John McCain is in any way close to the presidency. We're doing what we can up here, but because we're such close neighbours, we can't do it alone; we need a strong president and a strong leader in the White House to help change the world. And that leadership won't come from a man who's so lost in the fog that he can't function without the whisperings of a campaign staff run by the very lobbyists who oppose everything that economic change means.
That's why McCain cannot be president. The world needs decisive leadership capable of solving an actual crisis, not a puppet of the special interests. The world can't afford someone who can't even remember how many houses he owns. Because if he has to rely on his handlers for simple knowledge like that, what's he going to do in a real crisis when his judgment and knowledge will be seriously tested? When he gets a phone call at 3am, is he going to have to make another call at 3:05am to his lobbyists to tell him what to do? And what are those people going to tell him? Can the people around McCain be trusted? Judging from the record of corruption among them, it's a scary thought.