An October 14 article by Sam Stein on the Huffington Post this week got me thinking. As I read it more and more, one interesting idea came to me: “What if John McCain actually wanted to lose?”
The gist of Sam Stein’s article is summarized in the first four paragraphs of the article as so:
Matthew Dowd, a prominent political consultant and chief strategist for George W. Bush’s reelection campaign eviscerated John McCain on Tuesday for his choice of Sarah Palin as vice president.
Dowd proclaimed that, in his heart of hearts, McCain knew he put the country at risk with his VP choice and that he would “have to live” with that fact for the rest of his career.
“They didn’t let John McCain pick the person he wanted to pick as VP,” Dowd declared during the Time Warner Summit panel. “When Sarah Palin got picked instead of Joe Lieberman, which I fundamentally believed would have given John McCain the best opportunity in this race… as soon as he picked Palin, that whole ready versus not ready argument was not credible.”
More below the fold
Matthew Dowd continued:
Saying that Palin was a “net negative” on the ticket, he went on: “[McCain] knows, in his gut, that he put somebody unqualified on the ballot. He knows that in his gut, and when this race is over that is something he will have to live with… He put somebody unqualified on that ballot and he put the country at risk, he knows that.”
And so, being the cynic that I am, I said to myself, mmmhhh. Then I thought to myself, is there a world out there, some sort of parallel universe in which one could imagine John McCain, repudiating his own vice-presidential choice in his own mind, might have held his head in his hands and said to himself, in despair: “God, what have I done?”
And so I continued to fantasize, thinking that, perhaps, just perhaps, after seeing the political disaster, and drag, that Sarah Palin has come to symbolize for the McCain ticket — bridge-to-nowhere, witch-hunt pastor, political and intellectual ineptitude, shady Alaskan politics, abuse of power and ethics violations, Alaskan separatism, etc. –, McCain ended up convincing himself that, for the sake of America, he could not risk winning this election and leave the country with the prospect of a President Sarah Palin should he come to kick the bucket during the early years of his Presidency.
And so I got myself to fantasize, just a little bit more, about the old, patriotic and mavericky John McCain that we had all gotten accustomed to, the real John McCain, the one who always put his country first (Prior to his choice of Sarah Palin), the one who would rather lose an election than cause America the pain of ending up with Sarah Palin as president of the United States.
What if, I said to myself, just what if, in the mysterious world of his mind, John McCain had basically decided that for the sake of America, he had to lose this election in order to allow for the possibility of a less risky choice for America, that is, Barack Obama?
What if John McCain had finally come to realize that, to undo the enormous damage, and risk, he was exposing America to, he had to run an erratic campaign in order to lose, and he himself, come election day, had to vote for Barack Obama?
Just something to ponder over, my friends…. even if just as a fantasy in the fantasy year of the mavericks.
(Look for the poll below on this issue)
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Dr. Daniel Mengara
The author is the founder of the Barack Obama Unofficial Advisory Council. He is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Montclair State University (New Jersey). He is also the leader of Bongo Doit Partir (Bongo Must Go), a movement of expatriated Gabonese citizens opposed and seeking an end to the 41-year-old dictatorial regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon.