As a screenwriter once posed the question, "He can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk?" We currently have in the candidates now running for the presidency, two men who promise change. Of the two, it is more interesting for the candidate of the currently ruling party to make such a call. It is in effect a repudiation of all that the Bush administration has wrought over the last eight years. Bush is so unpopular that his very presence was disallowed at the convention. Senator McCain is packaged as a "maverick" who will go his own way rather than follow in the path of George Bush, the much derided path of a third Bush administration. Is it possible? Would McCain take us on a new course? For the answer, let us turn to his first decision as possible president elect.
Acting on his prerogative as nominee of his party, John McCain cynically chose to put in place, one heartbeat from the oval office, an individual who is not merely unqualified, but a truly frightening prospect. This was not his finest moment; not an act of courage; even perhaps an act of cowardice. On every occasion when it has mattered, McCain has caved to the extreme right wing. Supposedly, these pacts with the devil have been made to serve the larger purpose of his taking the reins of leadership. Once in office, we are being asked to believe, Mr. Deeds will go to Washington, he will be his own man and his love of country and moral virtue will carry the day for democracy.
Nevertheless, in spite of the transparency of the party's chosen tactics, the appeal of McCain and even of his chosen cohort seems incontrovertibly strong for many across the heartland. It is an appeal that Senator Obama and the Democratic Party ignore at their peril. What is at issue in the next presidential election are the spoils of victory. A Republican victory will leave in place for another four, possibly eight years, a machine of the same neoconservatives, war mongers, religious fanatics and crass profiteers that has torn up the constitution, put extremists on the Supreme Court, privatized government functions--including the armed forces--and allowed the largest redistribution of wealth to the richest sector of the population in the country's history.
While McCain was making his speech, the media chose not to cover the streets outside of the arena. There would be no recreation of the 1968 Chicago convention. The mounted police, the police throwing tear gas grenades and rounding up journalists might have served to give a fuller picture of what Republican rule now looks like--if PBS, CNN and even C-Span had chosen to broadcast all that the convention signified. There is a machine out there now, and we have no Abe Ribicoff to call them on it. There were some in St.Paul who had chosen to "stand up and fight," and many of them ended up in the city's jail cells.