Let's forget for a moment that we're 48 hours away from the most important election in the history of the United States. This nation has an opportunity to write a new chapter that we can hope will help elevate our dialog and intercultural relationships to a place where we can move closer to becoming a more perfect union. Barack Obama can make that happen.
Join me below for a discussion about how an American hero was punk'd by a hockey mom from Alaska, a plumber from Ohio and a Rovian strategist to advance their own agendas.
Midway 2008, John McCain realized his campaign was in trouble. He needed someone to help him win. He picked Steve Schmidt, the same guy who trashed him during the 2000 election cycle. Schmidt was a Rovian.
Along the way, John McCain turned his campaign, his image, his reputation over to Schmidt. And John McCain became a surrogate to his own campaign. We can imagine strategy sessions during which McCain objects to nasty tactics, only to be shouted down by screams of "you want to win don't you?" Schmidt forgot product marketing 101: make the product inspire, unite and delight. Consumers want to feel good about the products they buy.
When it came time to make a decision about a VP running mate, McCain had a host of qualified intelligent candidates from which to choose. Candidates that would/could be acceptable to the entire nation and not just to one faction of his political party. Schmidt pushed Palin not because she was the most qualified, but because he knew John McCain's weakness for pretty women.
Picking Sarah Palin was more cynical than it was strategic. She was glad to accept the assignment. But not for the reasons we thought. It was all about her. She wanted resume filler. It became clearer that it was about her last week when she began ignoring her advisers and publicly complaining about campaign strategy. It was about positioning herself for the future. But there is one problem: she doesn't know what she doesn't know. Imagine her actually competing for the nomination, standing for multiple debates, fully exposed. Look at the comedic material she provided for just 60 days. Imagine two years of her on the campaign trail.
For all the talk about her having more executive experience than Barack Obama, that executive experience left her without the instincts, intuition, intellectual vigor and ability to answer the most basic questions without appearing totally void of cognitive reasoning.
In Palin, McCain thought he was getting a game changer to wrestle away the media cycle from Barack Obama while at the same time solidifying the Republican base. In McCain, Palin got a bridge that would take her career to no where nationally. She didn't realize that the national stage requires more than a wink and nice hips. This is the big leagues. She will always be the eye-candy that stirred the most extreme factions of the Republican party...the neo-Nazis, race-haters and separatists. She was proud to be a redneck.
Sarah's star plummeted to earth just as fast as it shot McCain's hopes into orbit. McCain needed a new stunt, a new messenger on which to pin his aspirations. Then came a bald headed guy in Ohio who had a simple question. Got a simple answer. But that answer and the guy's story gave McCain a new gimmick, a transfusion to close out his doomed campaign of stunts, robocalls, winks and being pranked.
On Wednesday, when John McCain wakes up from his nightmare of a campaign, he will have only himself to blame for how he lost. At 72, he probably won't spend much time reflecting on what happened. He knows why he lost. He lost because he was running to achieve a higher position in life than his father and grandfather had achieved. All the wrong reasons.
On Wednesday, Steve Schmitt will wake up to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. He will be an outcast in most political circles for how he ran McCain's campaign. No candidate for public office will hire him to run a campaign because his own reputation will need to be rehabilitated. Over beers he will recall the good old days of helping George Bush and Arnold Schwazznegger win. He will gloss over his experience losing to a first-term senator who would become the nation's first president who was biracial.
On Wednesday, Sarah Palin will wake up to realize that she, once again, is only good enough for second place as with the Miss Alaska pageant. But that's OK. She probably thinks with Arnold she'll be back. It will be just enough for her to return to Alaska and face the music of investigators and angry Alaskans thrown under her campaign bus. Sarah Palin was the accidental VP nominee. No more fans, plane rides and free wardrobes. No more lies, interviews and testy advisers.
On Wednesday, Joe the plumber will wake up to realize that the gravy train has come into the station and he'll have to go get a job to pay his back taxes. He too will soon be forgotten, just a footnote for historians of presidential elections.
We can only hope that the hockey mom, the plumber and the Rovian enjoyed their 15 minutes.
When we all wake up Wednesday morning, we will reflect on our front row seat to history. We will remember the highs and lows of watching a serious candidate take on and out-think the democratic establishment and the Republican attack machine. We will remember that he gave our country and the world an example. We will remember that he did it with class.