In these troubled times, people are looking for someone that can answer their questions. Or, at the very least, point them in the way of someone that can.
(Think of it this way: if you had a flat tire, would you want someone in the car that could jump out and lend a hand with the spare? Or someone that stands around and bad-mouths the good character of everyone else because they're standing in the cold?)
But we know that McCain and Palin have enough people voting for them. Maybe not enough to win (don't count your chickens though... don't forget to vote), but enough. One of the more informed is my father-in-law.
Or so I thought. You see, I got to ask this die-hard Republican what he thought about McCain's plan for one of the biggest issues of this election. And he didn't even know the plan existed.
Details below the fold...
There's one thing you should know about my dad-in-law before I begin: he is a retired teacher, and is one of the cleverest people I personally know.
During a conversation, he used the word 'socialist' and how he didn't want that in America, so I asked him what he thought of McCain's Resurgence Plan.
It's a major part of McCain's platform. McCain's own web page laying out McCain's Resurgence Plan uses the words "resurgence plan" six times.
I could tell, just by looking at my dad-in-law, that he didn't know what it was. I suspected we had a Palin moment here, so I adopted Charlie Gibson's tactic of not giving away what I knew. I told him it's one of McCain's biggest things on his website, it's in his Informing - Issues section, and it addresses one of the things that McCain says he would do.
My web savvy, clever, informed about most things dad-in-law? Not. A. Clue.
So he kept talking about socialism and I realized: this isn't just a Sarah Palin moment I have on my hands. What I have here is a full-blown Kevin James "I don't know" moment.
Once again: it's on McCain's own website, it's called McCain's Resurgence Plan. You'll notice that I'm not giving away what it actually is (yet).
Minutes ticked by. Finally, before I told him what it was about, I said something like "this is one of the biggest matters in America today, this Resurgence Plan could affect how millions of people vote, and I haven't heard McCain or Palin mention it once at one of their big televised public speeches."
I then told him it is McCain's plan to buy mortgages directly from homeowners, and replace them with fixed-rate mortgages (as long as they can prove their creditworthiness at the time of the original loan, and it's their primary residence... so many of the 'zero down people that are in trouble get no help).
I also told him that having the government control the means of wealth production for the lenders, and buying private homes to allow people to take part in a government program, is the biggest socialist thing either of the two main parties has mentioned so far.
The fact that a retired teacher, an intelligent man, had no idea about McCain's plans for the hottest issue facing millions of voters this year was just stunning. But I'm not surprised. McCain and Palin have done an abysmal job of selling their ideas. In fact, I can't think of an example where they HAVE pushed a specific policy idea to the American public. Oh, I know far more than I'd like about being registered to plumb in Ohio now, and I know that mothers of hockey-playing kids use the term "hockey mom", but that's about it from the Republicans.
So here's what I'd like to see -- I'd like someone with a camera to go to a Republican rally and ask people if THEY know what McCain's resurgence plan is. Tell them it's mentioned six times on the page that details it, tell them it's a major part of the McCain Informing - Issues section. And just ask them what they think of it, or what they think it's about.