Turn Left @ hypocrisy.com

You know, I’ve heard people call Sarah Palin folksy, genuine, feisty and even adorable. I’ve got some real-world descriptions for her like ignorant, uninformed, intellectually uncurious, downright nasty and a liar. At first, she may have been amusing, even forgivable. Today, she lived up to her self-proclaimed image as a pit bull with lipstick when she accused Barack Obama of associating with “terrorists” by linking him to a 70s radical who was a founder of the Weather Underground when Obama was a mere eight years old. How is Obama linked to William Ayers, now 63 years old? They live in the same Chicago neighborhood and have met several times. I guess we are to believe that Barack Obama moved there just so that he can associate with a terrorist? The truth is that bomb and conspiracy charges against Ayers were dropped in 1974. Today he is a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago. I’m not surprised this garbage came out of Palin’s mouth. She’s not just feisty, she’s downright nasty.

I guess if you can’t distinguish yourself from Bush-Cheney on the issues, there’s only one way to go, and that’s as low as you have to go to win. That’s where the McCain-Palin ticket is right now. They have regressed to the larval stage. What little attention they were devoting to the issues is now completely gone. And now that she has proven that she can’t answer the types of questions you’d expect a vice presidential candidate to be able to answer, it’s pretty clear that Sarah Palin is only going to be allowed to speak to reporters she is comfortable with. You know, those who won’t challenge her. That pretty much leaves Sean Hannity and Fox Network. It’s also clear what her assignment will be: To smear Barack Obama. If the campaign style seems a bit familiar, it’s because McCain’s campaign manager is a protegé of none other than Karl Rove, and Sarah Barracuda is up to the task.

Some folks are gushing about Mrs. Palin’s debate performance. It didn’t take much for her to look good, given the hole she was climbing out of. It was indeed a ‘performance’; there was nothing genuine about it. To real political junkies, she neither looked comfortable nor natural. She looked scripted and rehearsed. Sarah Palin didn’t answer one question that was asked of her by the moderator. These were questions that the people want answers to. Instead, Sarah Palin conducted her usual three-ring circus, ignoring the moderator’s questions and choosing her own topics. She hijacked the debate and turned it into a shameless stump speech spewing the McCain as Maverick propaganda and touting her record as mayor of Wasilla and Governor of Alaska.

The majority of the time she read directly off her notes, sticking to her talking points which were often not related to the questions Gwen Ifill was asking. When Biden spoke on the issues, she either rolled her eyes or smiled sarcastically. Some may have found that appealing, but Sarah Palin did a great disservice to the American people by not addressing the issues facing them. In fact, John McCain has done a great disservice to this nation and to the American people by choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate. It’s John McCain’s job to make sure Sarah Palin is qualified before putting her on the ticket. It’s John McCain’s job to make sure Sarah Palin is well informed about their campaign positions. However, the fact that Sarah Palin does not do anything to educate herself on the issues is because she’s intellectually uncurious. She couldn’t even give Katie Couric the names of publications or books that she reads. It doesn’t seem inconceivable that she doesn’t bother to read.

The repeated winking into the camera was way over the top. The first time she did it, I felt like years of fighting for women’s equality went out the window. It got worse from there. There isn’t one person I’ve spoken to, male or female, that didn’t interpret her winking as a deliberate exploitation of her sexuality. Given Mrs. Palin’s view of what women should be, that doesn’t surprise me either. She got Rich Lowry of the National Review Online so riled up that he posted a supposed review of her ability to connect with the public that read like some kind of perverted soft-core porn. I will not show the post in this article, but you can read it here. The morning after the debate as I stood in line at the supermarket, I overheard the two men behind me talking about Sarah Palin’s winking into the camera. One said to the other, “Man, I’m really tired but, hey, after she winked into the camera there was no way I was going up to bed.” Is this the kind of representation we want in Washington, ladies? Her image doesn’t work for me. I can do without brainless but hot.

That fact that Sarah Palin is a compulsive liar is not new news. In fact, Keith Olbermann pledged to donate $100 for every lie she tells. He donated $3,700 this week alone to the Alaska Special Olympics Fund. At this rate, Olbermann might have to hit Hank Paulson up for a loan. She claims that Alaska has billions of gallons of oil that will help us become energy independent. Alaska pumped 777 billion gallons of oil back in 1988. In 2006, it was down to 225 billion, and it continues to fall. Everyone was warned that the oil supply would eventually be depleted. Yet, Palin continues to feed the American public lies about her state coming to the rescue. This whole ‘drill, baby, drill’ lie is just unbelievable because the math doesn’t work. It’s another lie foisted upon us by the Republicans. America owns, at best, about 2% of the world’s oil supply, but we use 25% of the world’s oil supply. This is basic math. What is it that people don’ t understand about it? She continues to tell the American people that she was against the Bridge to Nowhere from the beginning. This is a lie. Sarah Palin lobbied extensively for this project, until she realized it was a bad political move to do so. Then, she turned against it out of political expediency. Here’s the kicker, she never returned the money. Instead, she built the road leading to the non-existent Bridge to Nowhere. At the Republican Convention, she talked about the Alaska natural gas pipeline, saying, “And when the deal was struck, we began a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.” Come on, Sarah. The pipleline exists only on paper, the application will not even be filed until 2011, and it will take ten years to construct.

Now we come to the issue of her folksiness. Joe Biden broke down as he related the story of losing his wife and daughter in an accident, and the fear he felt being left to raise two gravely injured boys by himself. He was not even sure if they were going to survive. Sarah Palin smiled through the entire story. At the end, instead of expressing some type of comfort, she immediately returned to her notes and began another John McCain as Maverick fantasy. So much for “folksy.” Being folksy means being genuine and empathizing with people. It’s not supposed to be an act, but it clearly is with Palin. Seeing the way she reacted to Biden made me instantly realize that she could care less about the average American.

Sarah Palin is a legend in her own mind. She lives in an alternate universe from the rest of the American public. What America needs is a vice presidential candidate grounded in reality and in tune with the needs of her citizens. America also needs someone with the intelligence and savvy to assume the role of the presidency at a moment’s notice. Sarah Palin may do okay when her talking points are scripted for her, but running the country is never scripted. It requires the ability to think on your feet, analyze the situation and take action that is in the best interest of the American people. Sarah Palin is by no stretch of the imagination ready for this job.

I blogged live on Twitter last night during the vice presidential debate. The consensus? Sarah Palin exceeded expectations, but that’s because she was allowed to run her own circus side show.  Sarah Palin didn’t answer any of the questions posed by Gwen Ifill. As for Gwen Ifill? Well, the big “to do” that the McCain camp made of her book on the history of black politicians (and her supposed preference for Barack Obama) certainly hampered her ability to moderate the debate. The McCain camp planned it that way. McCain insisted he didn’t know about the book until just days before the debate. This bolsters my belief that McCain and his staff spend most of their time under a rock because the book was announced in July and everybody else knew about it.  As a result, Ifill was clearly overly cautious about keeping Sarah Palin on topic.

On the first question of the evening, Ifill stated that neither candidate answered what was asked. That was the last time she noted that in spite of the fact that Sarah Palin followed her own agenda and responded to nothing that was asked. I certainly believe that there should be some flexibility in the debate to respond to issues raised and change the scope slightly to clarify positions. However, it was truly mind boggling because Sarah Palin was entirely in another place. In her mind, she was at a campaign rally talking to supporters. Palin came well prepped with a set of talking points and stuck to them like glue. She changed the very topics of the debate so that she could not fail and to make McCain look like the maverick that he really isn’t. How many times did you count the word maverick in her incoherent babble last night? She continued to portray herself as “Joe Six Pack” just like the American middle class, a portrait that some find offensive, by the way. Someone should tell Sarah Palin that not all middle class Americans are beer swilling hockey moms and dads. Someone should also tell her that she is not really a member of the middle class.

The Palins earned $230,000 in 2007, of which $125,000 was Palin’s income as Governor of Alaska. The figures do not include the $17,000 in per diem payments Palin received for 312 nights she spent in her own home since becoming governor, the $43,490 she received to cover travel costs for her family, or the $1,654 each member of the Palin family received in state oil royalties paid to all Alaskans. Census Bureau figures put the median Alaskan income at $64,333 a year, and the median American (non-Alaskan) income at $50,740. The Palin’s estimated net worth is listed at $1.2 million. They own a half million dollar home on a lake with a float plane at the dock and two vacation retreats. I don’t believe that most “middle class” Americans share that fortune. Do you? While this doesn’t come close to the McCain fortune, including 13 cars and 8 homes, the notion that either member of this regime will champion the middle class is hard to swallow.

Palin kept on with the “a change is coming” statement, but she never talked about what change was coming. She never once distinguished McCain-Palin from Bush-Cheney, and that’s because there really is no difference. There were no specifics about policies and plans. There were just broad talking points and she never veered from them. She repeated the same thing over and over. Palin did make one statement that showed how closely aligned Bush-Cheney and McCain-Palin are. Gwen Ifill correctly noted that Palin once stated that she didn’t exactly know what the vice president’s role was, so she asked the candidates how they would handle the role of the vice president if elected:

First came a lame joke, then Palin stated, “…Of course, we know what a vice president does. And that’s not only to preside over the Senate and will take that position very seriously also. I’m thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president’s policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are…”

It is clear that, like her predecessor Dick Cheney, Palin favors expansion of the powers of the executive branch at her whim. She could care less about the Constitution. It is not the role of the Senate to provide blanket support of the president’s policies. It is the role of the Senate (and the House) to represent the American people in Washington, and to provide a voice for those who have no voice. Rather than differentiate the ticket from Bush-Cheney, she aligned the ticket with Bush-Cheney because that is exactly the way our elected representatives have been manipulated since the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Americans be warned. It’s the same old wine in a brand new bottle.

Finally, a comment about the notion that Sarah Palin successfully took her cause directly to the American people. I believe she took her cause successfully to her conservative base and to those who were in a panic over the uncertainty of her performance. There was a style of sorts, but I simply have a hard time seeing Sarah Palin as having “folksy charm.” In fact, I don’t find her charming at all. She winked into the camera more than once, which is obnoxious and condescending. When Biden spoke, there were times when she sometimes snickered and rolled her eyes. She played the “mom” card far too many times in her effort to attract women voters. When Biden finally spoke of the personal pain he suffered after losing his wife and daughter in an accident and then having to take care of two sons by himself, Palin showed not one ounce of empathy and offered no comfort. In fact, she smiled throughout the entire story and then simply went coldly back to her talking points when he was finished. It could be the basis for a new movie: The Stepford Wife Goes to Washington.

While Joe Biden isn’t the most exciting speaker, he is knowledgeable, understands the real issues facing Americans, and can think on his feet. He can respond to statements and challenges without reading canned notes or changing the subject. He has a mind and uses it. He was clearly focused on differentiating Barack Obama from John McCain and his policies. This is the kind of information Americans are looking for after eight years of Republican rule. What Sarah Palin did was successfully stop the bleeding. The McCain camp has no intention of allowing her to be interviewed one-on-one for the next 32 days. Prior to the debate, the McCain camp said she will hold one press conference, but I’m willing to bet that never happens. Now, the focus goes back to Obama and McCain.  After watching McCain self destruct over the past several weeks, I don’t think this bodes well for him.

“She’s feisty. She’s adorable.”

“If she can run the PTA, she can be president.”

“People can identify with her. She has five kids. I have six.”

What is this? The American Idol of politics? Well, surprise, it isn’t. This is one of the most critical elections in our nation’s history, but the McCainiacs have fallen hook, line and sinker for the distraction effect that his campaign brain trust promised. Back at the beginning, McCain’s staff openly stated that they didn’t want this campaign to be about issues, but rather personalities. How pathetic. Do you really think he’s putting Country First? John McCain is doing a great disservice to the American people. I think he should drop that slogan just about as quickly as he should drop Sarah Palin. John McCain is putting John McCain first. That speaks volumes for the man and why he should never be president of the United States.

Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s remove the issues (like social security, health care, the energy crisis, the housing crunch, the Wall Street pig-fest, and the two wars) and take everything else that has gone on in the McCain campaign for the White House. I’m up for it because I find many, many disturbing things. If we’re talking personalities, so be it. However, character doesn’t get a bye here.

-John McCain doesn’t think. He simply reacts, and he’s a man of high drama. First, he postponed the opening of the Republican Convention because of Hurricane Gustav, which was headed towards New Orleans. What John McCain wanted you to believe is that he cares so much about the poor people of Louisiana. Yet the fact remains that Senator McCain has voted against a lot of the Katrina assistance. I can’t imagine he has any feelings for the people of New Orleans. For those who know his voting record, this doesn’t ring true. What does ring true is that he wants to get elected because, at 72, this is his last presidential hurrah. Will anyone even consider him at 76 years old? I doubt it.

-Round two of high drama was the selection of Sarah Palin as vice president. He loves big impact moves that keep the American public on an uneven keel. That way he can distract them from the issues. More on Palin and why she doesn’t belong on the ticket is to come, but suffice it to say that he didn’t even screen her himself. He left that to the secretive, ultraconservative right wing group, the Council on National Policy. Back in 2000 he referred to Christian conservatives as the ruination of the Republican party (he was right); today he’s in bed with them because he needs them to win. McCain met Palin only one time before offering her the VP slot. Let’s just say that his decision-making capabilities come into question here. He preferred Joseph Lieberman, but a quasi-liberal Jew won’t fly with the Christian conservatives who are damned intent on forcing their religious beliefs on the rest of us. Don’t get me wrong. I’m absolutely no fan of Joseph Lieberman. I wasn’t even when he ran with Al Gore. Do I think he’s qualified? Yes, I do. Sarah Palin is a national joke. If she isn’t. She should be.

-Sarah Palin has been described as “feisty.” That’s not the word I’d use. I’d use snide and insulting, but not feisty. Notice I’m not calling her what the mainstream media called Hillary Clinton. She stood up at the Republican Convention and literally insulted and belittled community organizing. Does she have any idea how much a part of the American fabric of life community organizing is? Does she have a grasp on how important it is? When we were homeless the government was content to let my family hang on a limb, mostly because we were a “gay” family and - in its eyes - not legitimate. Let’s make one thing clear: Had it not been for community organizers we would not have gotten any help at all or gotten ourselves out of that situation.

-The notion that running the PTA makes you ready for the vice presidency and, potentially, the presidency is a joke. Sarah Palin has absolutely no foreign policy experience whatsoever. We are in the midst of two ill-advised wars that are both unwinnable. We’ve made enemies of the majority of our former allies and have a lot of rebuilding to do. Palin has defended herself by saying that she’s got foreign policy experience because she can see Russia from Alaska. Okay, maybe the first time this came out of her mouth one could chalk it up to nerves. However, Sarah Palin continues to use this childish example to defend her supposed foreign policy experience. She even managed to expand upon this defense and make it sound even more foolish when she spoke with Katie Couric:

“We have trade missions back and forth,” said Palin. “We, we do, it’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to, to our state.”

Listening to Sarah Palin on the issues is like listening to a drunk person trying to regain some semblance of coherence. It would be funny if she wasn’t a heartbeat away from the presidency. When I worked for a Fortune 500 company, I built two departments from the ground up; I hired, promoted, demoted and fired employees; I ran $7 million dollars worth of budgets; and was responsible for my division’s marketing communications and technical communications functions. I even managed European personnel and traveled back and forth a great deal. I am not so presumptuous as to think that I’m remotely qualified for the vice presidency. I am not, and I would not expect the American people to accept my credentials. Again, this is John McCain putting his country second to his victory.

-Sarah Palin knows nothing about the economy. She barely has command of the English language. Here’s another excerpt from her interview with Kathie Couric, this time on the bail-out.

Katie Couric: Why isn’t it better, Gov. Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

Gov. Sarah Palin: That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the — it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

Someone should tell Governor Palin that the bail-out is, in fact, about none of that. It’s all about helping the party boys on Wall Street continue to feast on the taxpayers’ dollar. That’s what it’s about. Some insist she needs to be briefed better. That’s not the issue. The issue is that Governor Palin cannot think on her feet. She has no command or understanding of the issues. It requires more than briefing.

-Fire the SEC Chairman! That was John McCain’s instant solution/reaction to the Wall Street meltdown. Again, more drama. That’s because he really doesn’t have an understanding of the issue. For the record, John McCain has no grasp of economics either and he has admitted this publicly. So then, why did he have to “suspend” his campaign to run back to Washington (another thing he didn’t really do since he was in New York standing up David Letterman to go on with Katie Couric instead). Better idea, John, let’s get rid of the no regulation, free market Republicans whose 28 years of deregulation created this Wall Street mess just like it created the S & L scandal. For the record, he’s one of those Republicans. Do the words “The Keating Five” ring a bell? John McCain was one of the politicians who fought against regulating the Savings & Loan industry. When his friend Charles Keating, of Lincoln Savings & Loan, came under investigation, John McCain was one of five politicians who sought to throw that investigation off the track. After getting caught with his hands in the till, he reinvented himself as this maverick politician fighting against special interests.

-Of course, this maverick image is a lie too. Suddenly, Senator McCain is a populist! He may talk in forceful tones about the Wall Street lobbyists, but that doesn’t stop him from having 83 of them working on his 2008 campaign. He speaks against “golden parachutes” for under-performing executives, but his campaign’s chief economic advisor, Carly Fiorina, destroyed HP and walked away with a $42 million dollar golden parachute ($21.4 million in severance). On the other side of the coin, Fiorina’s poor performance and bad business decisions caused 20,000 people to lose their jobs. So, why the hell, then, is she his chief economic advisor? He had harsh words for the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bail out, but we now know that the man credited with reviving the McCain campaign, Rick Davis, took $15,000 a month payments from Freddie Mac right up until last month. Why? For access to John McCain to keep regulators off their tails. Lies. Lies. Lies. Do we want yet another liar for president? Been there. Done that. We’ve seen the results.

-John McCain refuses to release his medical records, and his wife refuses to release her tax records (and that’s where all the action is). John McCain has had multiple bouts with melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer. One was just a few weeks ago when a lesion was removed from his cheek. He also shows signs of confusion. He has difficulty identifying foreign leaders (witness the confusion over the leader of Spain). When questioned, McCain could not remember how many homes he owned. He cannot tell the difference between Sunni and Shia. He keeps referring to Czechoslovakia, a nation that has not existed since 1993. I believe that the American people are entitled to know his medical condition, considering the fact that we could end up with Sarah Palin running the country. I also believe that the American people have a right to know about his family’s financial condition. Everyone else has had to comply. If he cannot comply, then I believe that he should not be allowed to run.

-Perhaps John McCain has problems multitasking. That will be a problem for anyone inheriting the job he’s running for. Or perhaps his need to “suspend” his campaign over the current economic crisis was just to gain some attention for a faltering effort. Either way, it doesn’t say much good about the man’s character. First of all, the notion that he “suspended” the campaign is a lie. He told David Letterman he had to fly back to DC immediately to assist with the bail-out. Instead he went down the street and was interviewed by Katie Couric in an effort to minimize the damage done to his campaign by the horrible Sarah Palin interview. That’s really why he canceled Letterman, because the next morning he was still in New York speaking at Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative. He never flew back to DC “immediately.

And he never “suspended” his campaign either. To suspend something means to stop it. The bash Obama ads continued to run, and members of his staff spent the day on the air telling everyone that would listen that’s just how selfless McCain is. He suspended his own campaign to help the country…to put Country First. In reality, he wasn’t needed or wanted in DC. He would have nothing to do there had George Bush not covered for him and invited him to the White House. It was at those White House talks that the deal began to fall apart. He left the next day to go back on the campaign trail and attend the debate with Barack Obama. He then told the news media he was flying immediately back to DC after the debate to continue work on the bail-out. He never did that. More untruths. More lies. Work on the bail-out package continued Friday and over the weekend without John McCain. He insisted it could be handled by phone (by the way, the same reason he’s been criticizing Obama). Yesterday, before the vote on the new bail-out package, he took the credit for pulling it together. After it lost in the House, he blamed Barack Obama. Someone should tell Senator McCain that more Republicans voted “nay” than Democrats. Someone should also remind him that he never returned to Washington as he promised. The reality is that his “suspending” his campaign to become involved in the bail-out gave him a giant photo op. In other words, it was a fraud, just like so many things he’s laid at the doorstep of the American people. How’s that for leadership?

Issues aside, these are all the reasons I’d not touch the McCain-Palin ticket. We need to do more as a nation than elect someone who is “likable.” We need to elect someone who is forthright and capable. We’ve had the liars and ill-prepared for eight years. I believe that character and truth are essential. Add the issues in to the mix, and prospects for the American people are even worse under a McCain presidency.

With the media focus on the economy, the Wall Street debacle and the it-would-be-funny-if-it-was-make- believe McCain meltdown, one explosive story has been lost in the shuffle. On September 12, Condoleeza Rice signed a statement in response to an 18-month investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee stating that she led meetings in 2002 and 2003 (in the company of other senior Bush officials) to discuss the use of torture on Al Qaeda detainees. At the time, Rice was National Security Advisor. This is the first time a high-ranking official has formally acknowledged that the White House held such discussions. Torture is just one of the reasons impeachment should never have been delayed for so long, and why the process should continue in spite of the fact that Herr Bush has only a few months left. There is no statute of limitations on war crimes, so George Bush should not be allowed to find a safe haven even after he leaves office.

Condoleeza Rice knows how serious this is. She has retained legal counsel. Rice’s admission effectively makes a lie (surprise!) out of George Bush’s assertion that the abuse came at the hands of just a few bad apples. Of the meetings, Senator Carl D. Levin (D-Mich) said, “We’ve long believed they took place.” Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also stated that Rice’s admission is “new, concrete evidence that they took place in the White House.” Rice also identified others involved in meetings at various times as former Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto R. Gonzales (then Presidential Counsel), and Vice Presidential Counsel David S. Addington. Others have been sent the same letter as Rice, but have declined to respond. No surprise there. This is the administration that refuses to respond to anything, even subpoenas. Michael Mukasey refuses to do his job as the chief law-enforcement officer in the land. By this time in the Nixon regime, an independent prosecutor was appointed and an investigation was in full swing.

George Bush, Dick Cheney and their lawless minions have lowered the bar on American democracy. The Bush administration has effectively reduced this country to the level of those it is supposedly fighting to rid the world of. It is the height of hypocrisy: The image of George Bush riding on his white horse to rid the world of a brutal dictator (Saddam Hussein), all the while subverting the US Constitution, taking away our rights and authorizing the use of torture on detainees. Our leaders seem to have this arrogant, ugly attitude that we can break any law we deem necessary without being held accountable because we’re America. It is no wonder we are increasingly seen around the world as being brutish and arrogant. We’ve earned that status.

In June, Levin released documents that detailed a pattern of abuse and torture that was a deliberate policy of the Bush administration, not the brainchild of lower-level military personnel. The policy was approved at the highest levels of our government and was given cover by the Justice Department. The Bush administration justifies its actions by reinterpreting the law to its own pathetically-low standards, which are far less demanding than international law. However, the United States invaded a sovereign nation under false pretenses. George Bush, Dick Cheney and the rest who have participated in this disgraceful, clearly un-American activity should be shipped off to The Hague for trial under international law. At the end of the day, George Bush is no different than Pol Pot or Radovan Karadžić.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. John McCain is using distraction and drama to try to win the 2008 presidential election because he’s got precious little else to run on. That’s what this whole “suspending my campaign” propaganda is all about. That McCain has told lies since this campaign’s inception is hard to argue. The facts are the facts, and he has been caught in every single one because, frankly, he’s not a particularly good liar either. The night he stood up David Letterman, he was supposed to be putting his country first and flying back to Washington because this whole bail out issue had to be resolved right now. This minute. Instead, he was displaying his incredible lack of judgment by being in the very same studio as David Letterman being interviewed by Katie Couric. To Letterman’s credit, he rightfully embarrassed the Senator. Someone called it a ‘hissy fit’ on Letterman’s part but, let’s face it, John McCain is a liar and got what he deserved.

He’s a liar because the next morning he was still in New York speaking at Bill Clinton’s feel good Global Initiative. He wasn’t in Washington building bi-partisan consensus, which is the outright garbage he tried to feed the American people. John McCain has absolutely no expertise in money and markets. In fact, he has not even demonstrated that he understands the Wall Street problem. He has very little to offer in the way of help and members of his own party said that, when he finally did show up, he was more of a hindrance than anything else. As of Tuesday night, McCain admitted in an interview that he hadn’t even read the two-page requisition for slimy Hank Paulson’s $700 billion dollar blank check. How does it take to read something like that? If you’re challenged, maybe ten minutes. Yet, he wants us to believe he put country first and had to rush back to Washington to solve the problem. He flatters himself because John McCain has proven that he’s not the solution to anything.

John McCain is a liar because he looked the American people in the eye and told them he was “suspending” his campaign. He did not suspend his campaign. The bash Obama ads continued to run. His campaign staff continued to go on air with interviews throughout the day touting their selfless maverick candidate. Suspending a campaign means everything stops. What John McCain should have said to the American people was, “I’m down in the polls and I’m a disorganized candidate. I’ve picked an uniformed, unqualified vice presidential candidate who is embarrassing my candidacy with the interviews she’s giving. So, I’m going to go to Washington to try to get some attention and see if I can get this train wreck back on track. Oh, yeah, I also want to try to avoid the debate if I can.” That would have been much more accurate. I mean, if he’s honest John McCain, let’s just be honest here.

The one thing Senator McCain has done is prove that he lacks judgment on all fronts, particularly in choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate. Most inexperienced people get better as time goes on, but Sarah Palin gets worse. Why? Because it isn’t simply lack of experience. She really isn’t all that intelligent. She cannot speak to the issues because she doesn’t understand the issues. She barely has command of the English language. If anybody thinks her interview with Katie Couric was coherent and lucid, I want some of what they are smoking. It was painful to watch from my perspective. I thought Dan Quayle was just about the worst. I was wrong. It can get much, much worse. Oh, by the way, this notion that Sarah Palin represents everyone in small-town America is an insult to those who proudly live there. The American people are much smarter and much more aware than Sarah Palin.

Senator McCain is no leader. Apparently, he has a problem multitasking. He has to suspend a campaign (lie) to go back and deal with the Wall Street debacle? How is he going to run the country? Take a look at the mess his friend, George Bush, is leaving him. We have two wars going absolutely nowhere and people dying every day. Now, we’re fighting the Pakistanis, our supposed allies in the war on terror. We have economic disaster everywhere, not just on Wall Street. People are losing their homes and jobs at alarming rates. We clearly have an energy crisis going on that will need a lot more than the childish “drill, baby, drill” antics on display at the Republican convention. So, how is John McCain going to run this country? I think that’s a valid question at this point. John McCain should show up at the debate to night and put his ideas in front of the American people. Let’s see if he can win their hearts and minds. Let’s see if he has any ideas. Let’s see if he has any solutions to the challenges facing this nation. At this point, make him prove he deserves the job.

Drama after distraction after drama. From the ‘postponement’ of the Republican Convention because of Hurricane Gustav, to choosing Sarah Palin, to calling for the firing of the SEC Chairman, to suspending his campaign so he can fly back to Washington and save Wall Street, to not being able to commit to tonight’s debate…that’s what John McCain is all about. He’s like a child who will do anything for attention, even if it’s negative attention. It’s one thing for a five-year-old to do it. It’s another thing for a 72-year-old who wants to be president of the United States to do it. At McCain’s age, there’s usually something psychologically pathological about it.

One thing became abundantly clear this week: George Will was right. John McCain is not fit to be president of the United States.