Election Season, or Twilight Zone Episode?

By Sutton R. Stokes, 9-26-08

	Caption: Don't you just want to pinch his cheek? Photo by Flickr user World Economic Forum/Swiss Image. Some rights reserved.

There was more than a touch of surreality in the air as summer wound down and the fall election season loomed on the horizon.

Followers of the preacher James Dobson lobbied God to rain on Barack Obama’s outdoor speech accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. Though this effort was unsuccessful, no one could say if God’s no-show constituted an endorsement or if He was just doing something else that night.

Meanwhile — though it remains uncertain who, if anyone, invited Hurricane Gustav to come ashore during the Republican convention — it was possible to detect some slight disappointment emanating from the McCain campaign when it became clear that circumstances weren’t going to permit the Senator from Arizona to give his own acceptance speech while filling sandbags atop the Industrial Canal levy with his shirtsleeves rolled up and a staffer standing by with a bottle of nitroglycerine pills, as originally planned.

Despite God’s refusal to cooperate in these matters, McCain emerged from his convention riding high in the polls. This “bounce” was apparently because the Senator had selected his running mate with less care than a six-year-old playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey, not to mention his shedding of the “experience” argument in favor of a warped version of Obama’s reform platform: “change Washington by voting for four more years of Republican rule!”

Polling in mid-September also found clear support for the statement “up is down.”

As the month limped to a close, operatives of the party of alleged fiscal responsibility began appearing on camera, tugging at their collars and licking their lips as they admitted that, yes, maybe it would be prudent for everyone to convert their savings to gold, just for the time being anyway. In more than one case, the whine of a helicopter engine warming up could be heard from just off camera, as could the sound of fancy silver being scooped off of tables into pillowcases.

Apparently believing that the best way to appear presidential during a crisis is by giving the impression of not being able to think about more than one thing at once, McCain announced that he was “suspending” his campaign “until we have taken action to address this crisis” and asked if he could also have an extension on getting ready for tonight’s debate, preferably until after Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin and 10 other states have commenced early voting.

But with McCain attack ads still playing across the country, and with all McCain campaign offices open for business, it seems that the whole “suspension” may really have been nothing more than a ruse to avoid facing that stern interlocutor David Letterman on Wednesday night. Of course, McCain is more of a Leno man, having appeared on the Tonight Show more than a dozen times in the last year alone and, throughout the show’s history, more often than even Arnold Schwarzenegger (but less often, obviously, than a “celebrity”).

Maybe McCain skipped Letterman so he could get up to speed on the financial crisis before rushing back to Washington to solve it. As of Tuesday, after all, McCain — who admitted last year that “the issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should” — still had not read Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s 3-page, 18-point, triple-spaced bailout “plan.” This oversight was surprising to many observers, given that the document, which is also said to have extremely wide margins, was first propagated on Saturday and has even been stapled above the urinals in the U.S. Capitol restrooms since Sunday morning.

Perhaps McCain couldn’t remember where the restrooms were: during the 110th Congress, McCain has missed more votes than any other senator, including Tim Johnson, who of course deserves a pass anyway for all that time he spent at his home in South Dakota recovering from a massive stroke.

Whatever preparations McCain made in lieu of appearing with Letterman, however, don’t seem to have been sufficient. During Thursday’s historic meeting between President Bush, Secretary Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and the Congressional leadership of both parties, McCain is reported to have sat on his hands for most of the meeting, only speaking up toward the end to mumble his endorsement of “that other plan those other guys were talking about on the car ride over here.”

One thing a good leader does is set an example. It was clear by Thursday morning that McCain is no slouch in this regard at least, as reports came in of multiple cases of people calling out from work “because of the financial crisis.” What looked like a good joke yesterday has inched sickeningly closer to everyone’s wallets today, though. This morning we learned that, on top of everything else, we have in the last 16 hours or so experienced the largest bank failure in U.S. history. Listening to the radio with half an ear while frying up a couple of eggs for breakfast, I almost missed this news item entirely, so similar did it sound to all of the other catastrophes that have become the normal background noise of our day-to-day lives.

Given all of this, we cannot know at this point if there will even be a country left to lead in January, but it’s probably best not to think about that now. Just keep buying gold and ammunition, and also keep your fingers crossed that, when the cameras zoom out tonight, they show an empty podium across the stage from Obama. McCain has blinked and is now saying he’ll show up after all (I guess the crisis must be over), but I still think that seeing Obama debate himself would be the only fitting end to this weirdly terrible month.

For more like this, read the rest of the Missoula Notebook.