Did you love McCain's response to Biden's comments yesterday about how Obama will be tested in the first six months of his presidency? Biden basically said that Obama would, most likely, come up against some sort of test like the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early part of his first term.
Here's what McCain told a crowd of McCainiacs in response:
"I was on board the USS Enterprise," McCain, a former naval aviator, said in the capital city of Harrisburg. "I sat in the cockpit, on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise, off of Cuba. I had a target. My friends, you know how close we came to a nuclear war."
As the crowd of several thousand began to swell with cheers and applause, he added with dramatic effect: "America will not have a president who needs to be tested. I've been tested, my friends."
Don't you just love the semantical arguments made in election cycles? You know, I used to work with a guy (a Republican, oddly) who, when he knew he was losing a political argument, would resort to breaking down each and every little word, trying to roll it into something he could build a new argument on. He never could mount a new argument, but it did serve as a nice (for him) distraction that usually made his opponent give up and walk away.
Of course, in Captain Caveman's case, you really have to be drinking the Kool-Aid to fully buy what he's saying. The fact that he was on the USS Enterprise during the Cuban Missile Crisis, with orders, waiting to go on a bomb run really doesn't mean he's been tested as the...well...LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD! There's a marked difference in getting orders and giving orders.
Besides, if he had gone on his ordered bomb runs, Ol' Johnny probably would've crashed the plane anyway. I know, it sounds cruel, but I'm just saying...his batting average for missions isn't all that impressive.
Also, there's the issue of how the word "tested" is employed by each candidate. After eight years of The Idiot Era, the next president is going to be "tested" no matter who wins the election! It's pretty obvious that's what Biden's getting at.
But, John McCain never lets context get in the way of stroking his own ego. To him, the "tested" means that the rest of the world sees Obama as a huge question mark, the kind of newbie leader they can mop the floor with. And, that thought process shows McCain's projection issues.
Ol' Johnny knows now that the only recourse he has left is to point out his own failures as he sees them in his enemy. (Make no mistake, no matter what McCain says about Obama, he only sees his younger opponent as an enemy.) McCain's carrying his own (and much more damaging) domestic terrorist baggage. He's got his own (and much more pronounced and dangerous) experience gap. And, most importantly, in the context of the recent economic crisis, McCain has already been tested and failed miserably.
The only thing that McCain's presence on the USS Enterprise that day in 1962 tells me is that his mindset and his methodologies are old and obsolete. He doesn't realize that passing the commander-in-chief test isn't simply a matter of donning a flight suit and waiting for orders. There are plenty of good soldiers out there who were never cut out to be leaders. They are only adept at following orders and doing what they're told, no matter how idiotic those orders might seem at the time.
In his campaign and his response to the recent economic turmoil, McCain has shown himself to be a good soldier, going wherever his managers and aides (and other assorted lobbyists) tell him to go, and saying what they tell him to say once he gets there, no matter how erratic or out-of-touch their orders seem to be.
He's even covered for every dirty trick they've pulled, though such "old politics" supposedly goes against his maverick nature.
Yes, throughout all of this, John McCain has shown that he's a good soldier...he's just not cut out to lead.
And, quite a few of "reliably red" voters are starting to figure that out.
Charles
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