Curtain Call
This is the final installment in our three-part exploration of the forces that led John McCain and Barack Obama to be the presidential nominees.
In case you missed the others, you can find part one by clicking here and part two by clicking here … although seriously, people, there’s no excuse for falling behind in your FITS reading.
Anyway, so far we’ve covered the primary reasons that Obama is the Democratic pick, and while the reasons themselves are pretty obvious – girls and “get out the vote†gimmicks – the explanations are much more nuanced than observers assume.
So it is with John McCain’s candidacy.
Pretty much everyone knows that McCain’s age is a significant factor in this election.
The general sense is that supporters chose him in spite of his age. Actually, voters picked him because of his age – but not based on the experience that accompanies it.
Which leads us to Force # 3:
John McCain, himself in his own dusk, is a suitable epitaph for the Republican Party.
Republicans are control freaks. The gist of Republicanism is, in fact, “control.â€
The Republican veil of self-control (autonomy, responsibility) belies the true intention – command of oneself, but also of everyone else.
So, too, do they want to control the death of their party and its legacy, and McCain – ex-POW, stalwart patriot, underdog, symbol of upward mobility, principled grump – represents what Republicans fancy their party to be.
Resistant though they are, Republicans know that the end is near for their movement. Just how near we are to the end remains to be seen tonight, as multiple “red” states are predicted to flicker to blue.
That’s really the change Obama’s offering, by the way – a shift so sweeping that it effectively smothers any chance of Republican reemergence.
Republicans want their party to die not only with dignity, but with a vengeance. And if there’s anything at which McCain excels, it’s resplendent reprisal. In that sense, a loss more than a win is most suited to the epigraphical interests of the Republican Party.
Like a play’s closing curtain conceals the chaos within, a McCain loss would drape dying Republicanism – allowing it to be remembered at its best, with quintessential GOP’er McCain triumphant as the curtain finishes its final descent.
To be sure, it’s no lucky coincidence that McCain, in candidacy as much as in defeat, is just what the Republican Party needs. The party, sensing in the primary an autumnal twilight, chose McCain to carry it to its end. A solider never leaves behind a comrade, after all.
Comments
By MisFit on November 4th, 2008 at 11:12 am
The Republican Party will rise again…Mitt Romney will divine water from the western Rock…Marie Osmond will be our Oprah…she will enter stage left…
People will SWOON in epic proportions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
By rick on November 4th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Well Mande, you’ve sounded the death knell on the Republican Party. If true, the problem you face is determining what the American people will do when they find out they’ve been deceived by Hussein. 2 years can allow Hussein to do a lot of damage….and bring back the Republicans as never before. Hint to the Republicans….regardless of what the Dems say….they’re lying…..Piss on working together, the Dem playbook is yours in the future, use it well.
By hannah friedman on November 4th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
I am 22 and I’d like to capture my thoughts before America either elects a president who its first 26 presidents could have legally owned, or brazenly subverts the very ideals it was founded upon by manipulating numbers in a final embarrassingly overt goosestep towards corporate totalitarianism.
I am nervous. And not night-before-the-swim-test nervous or even night-you-lose-your-virginity nervous, it’s a low rumbling primal panic which I can only liken to Star Wars panic. Disney panic. The edge-of-your-seat-terror that makes you wonder if Skywalker’s doomed after he refuses to join Darth Vader and drops down into the abyss, if the wicked octopus or grand vizier or steroid-pumping-village-misogynist is going to wed/kill/skin the dashing prince and then evil people in dark funny costumes are going to take over the world… if it wasn’t a movie of course.
And tonight it’s not. It’s not a movie and yet I feel like Obama might as well be wearing an American flag cape while a decaying McCain, in a high-tech robotic spider wheelchair wearing an eyepatch and stroking an evil cat, gives orders to a sexy scheming Palin who marches back and forth through their sub-terranian campaign lair in four inch thigh-highs and full-body black leather catsuit bossing around the evangelical ants with a loooooong whip… umm… is this just me?
Anyway, the point is that things feel weird folks. I have friends who have peed in waterbottles to keep from interrupting a Halo-playing marathon who got off their asses/couches to volunteer for the Obama campaign not once, but many times. Friends so cheap their body content is at least 1/3 Ramen Noodle who donated a good deal of their hard-earned cash to the campaign. People have registered to vote in record numbers, and yet, something just doesn’t feel right. I think we should stop congratulating ourselves for just voting. To vote is a privilege which people have died for, and I think there’s a whole lot more to be done for the country than to simply help win an election every 4 years.
Hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of man-hours spent on both sides by good-intentioned people who want to make a difference in an historic election, so many resources and voices and energies devoted to a single day. After tomorrow, half of that is going to have been a waste. And I can’t help but wonder what could have happened if all that muscle had been put towards something else, and what will happen to its momentum after the election has come and gone. Shouldn’t we be donating our money to good causes whenever we can? Helping people who don’t have? Dedicating some of our time to contribute to making the country which provides for us a better place? Of course a power shift is a hugely significant step on the path to great reform, but worrying about this election has been a wakeup call for me:
Even if Obama wins, we have not “won.” This isn’t a movie and we can’t toss every greedy lobbyist oil fatcat bigot down a reactor shaft. I think if we dedicate ourselves to the ongoing welfare of the country as much as we have to the outcome of this election, we’ll have a much better shot at coming closer to the overwhelming good the liberals hope Obama will usher in, but which no mere mortal could fully realize alone.
Which brings me to the other side. I’ve heard a lot of people claim that if McCain wins, they’re leaving. I heard the same thing about Bush’s reelection, and his unelection before that, and nobody seems to be leaving. And that’s fine. Because as much as I complain about certain political happenings, atrocities, etc., I really do like it here and I suspect most other people do too. We have New York and Hollywood, purple mountain’s majesty and sea to shining sea, we created jazz and country music and baseball and cars and lightbulbs and computers and that movie with hundreds of animated singing Chihuahuas! I mean who among the shivering Plymouth pilgrims ever imagined ordering hundreds of animated singing chihuahuas onto a magical box from an invisible information superweb?
The point being, if things don’t turn out the way I want tomorrow, I feel compelled, as a college-graduated adultish-type-person, to take a stand. And if I’m going to leave I’m going to leave. But if I’m going to stay I’m not going to sit around whining like I have for the past 8 years. It’s like when I don’t clean my room because it’s dirty and then I blame the dirt. So in my very indecisive way, before you and your screen, I’m declaring my intention to make some kind of stand in the event of -(Ican’tevensayit)-, and encouraging you to consider making one too…
Jump the ship or grab a bucket?
-Sigh-
Wasn’t everything so much easier back when the worst possible affront to your values was a PB&J sandwich cut diagonally with crust?
Anyways, I guess what I’m saying is that if we’re going to stay on board, we should probably be generous with our time and resources when times are tough even more than when the hero saves the day. Because what if he doesn’t? And what if he can’t? If we’re serious about real change, election day should only be the beginning of “Yes we can,” not the end.
Best,
Hannah Friedman
http://www.writinghannah.blogspot.com