Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Too Many McCains

He is outdoing the 1960 Richard Nixon, of whom John F. Kennedy said, "It must be hard getting up every morning and having to decide who you're going to be that day."

In a New York Times column today headed "The McCain of the Week," Gail Collins suggests, "Really, if McCain is going to keep changing into new people, the campaign should send out notices. (Come to a rally for the next president of the United States. Today he’s a vegetarian!)"

Aside from the lying attack ads on Barack Obama, the Republican effort to hold onto the Bush White House has deteriorated into wheeling out a new John McCain with every headline, accompanied by a plastic Palin figure nodding and smiling like a 21st century Pat Nixon with a few lines of actual dopey dialogue.

In the past week alone, McCain has morphed from the champion of free enterprise to an angry populist regulator of Wall Street, from a confident believer in the soundness of the economy followed a redefinition of "fundamentals" as the workers, not the complicated stuff of facts and figures.

Are voters with short memories actually buying all this? The polls are beginning to show an Obama rebound from the Palin bounce, but it would be foolish to discount the wisdom of P. T. Barnum in gauging public shrewdness.

Gail Collins notes that since "McCain’s willingness to make speeches that have nothing to do with his actual beliefs is not matched by an ability to give them, he wound up sounding like Bob Dole impersonating Huey Long."

Not to forget Richard Nixon.

2 comments:

Mike said...

For comic relief, I really appreciate it when the out-of-touch-fool McCain comes out. And this week, to help Obama in Miami and Albuquerque, we got an appearance from the geographically confused McCain who couldn't remember what continent Spain is on.
He makes Jon Stewart's job so easy.

Anonymous said...

When Reagan went into his dotage, Nancy ran the country with help of an astrologer and Frank Sinatra.

I wonder who will Cindy be using, if TailHook McCain gets the job?