One of Barack Obama's overused lines is: "John McCain is a good man, a war hero-- but John just doesn't "get it". I will not reiterate here why I categorically disagree with such sentiments, but I wonder if Obama himself understands just how much the 72 year old Senator McCain "does not get".
It is important to keep in mind that John McCain did not witness the social upheaval that took place during the late sixties and early seventies. While the civil rights movement was ushering women and minorities into the center ring of American politics John McCain was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. And though half of the country is not looking back, the America John McCain intended to serve still wobbles behind, struggling between progress and regression.
That lack of perspective is what allowed John McCain to think that someone as oblivious about the world as Sarah Palin could bolster his chances at becoming president. No doubt he imagined it was still the 80's and, like Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin merely had to flash some perfect white teeth to be the cherry on top of his platform's bowl of vanilla. Fresh from the snowy wilds of far-off Alaska, Sarah is the woman John kissed good-bye when he went off to bomb poor Vietnamese villagers. In his dreams he probably sees her as that perky fifties woman who could jump from the typing pool and land in the boss' lap. You know the one-- the girl men used to call "stacked" who knew how to wrap her package and time her giggle.
The other night, watching a possible President of the United States grin and wink when asked her thoughts on federal bankruptcy laws or Pakistani terrorism I thought I was seeing one of those science fiction flicks where the spaceship from earth lands on a technologically superior planet populated entirely by gorgeous women all scantily dressed and hungry for sex, but who could paralyze men with their hips.
I can only imagine how nauseating it must have been for the woman who has had to endure a supervisor's raunchy passes or see the airhead with the endless legs promoted to yet another pay-grade above her incompetence to watch Palin flirt and smirk for the camera. But what must have outraged every sentient viewer was that after being treated to ninety minutes of Palin dissembling and dodging questions our talking heads could not stop praising her mockery of the Fourth Estate as some sort of triumph.
As far as John's lost world is concerned, I suggest it is one of the reasons he could not look at Obama during their debate. John just can't wrap his mind around the fact that a biracial junior senator with a foreign-sounding name could more aptly represent America. John ran for the country he left to fight for-- the one still lingering out in snow-white Alaska and the frosty cabins of Montana and Idaho. The America where ambitious smiling girls have not yet tired of worshiping cranky old men and out-of-touch Cold War heroes.
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