How did John sleep?

Wow!

It is difficult to keep track with this campaign when blogging about it is not the only thing you have to do. I’m no Meghan McCain.

Tonight is the big night. The first debate between Barack and... well... an empty chair. At least, that’s the state of our knowledge this morning of September 26, 2008.

Two days ago, as I already wrote, John decided to “suspend” his campaign to go to Washington to save the world economy. Well, he said suspend, but he did not really suspend his campaign, no, we kept seeing his surrogates on TV who explained that he had “suspended” his campaign. Actually, we saw John in person saying quite a lot why he was “suspending” his campaign.
Of course, everybody knows now that the very “suspension” of his campaign was one more brilliant campaign stratagem.
When I say brilliant, that is of course to the measure of the Palin-pick standard of political brilliance.

I am writing this during the commercial breaks of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, who just described John as the only man who overreacts at an event which is ten days old.
That is exactly what this “campaign suspension” looks like.

So anyway, he suspended his campaign and asked for a delay of the debate due to take place on Friday night.

Suspense!!!! (over the suspension...)

The truth is probably, of course, than John does not want to debate. Because he does not really know what he is talking about, as is made obvious by the big perspiration drops rolling down his temples during the interviews he dares give.
You know, I will have to write a blog about the Republican ticket interviews, because I have never quite seen something like that anymore. Sarah Palin, in particular, is quite something. Yesterday, again, she said to Katie Couric of CBS that she has foreign policy experience because Russia is Alaska’s neighbor, and when the Russians violate American airspace, they will be over Alaska first. I mean, you don’t get better than that. Or maybe you could by saying that from Alaska, you can see Russia. Oh, wait a minute. She did that already.

The truth is also that John faces an incredible dilemma. He says the Paulson bailout plan (the government spends $700 billion dollars to save the economy) is a bad plan because the taxpayers should not have to pay this kind of money. That is basically the general opinion. A poll yesterday showed that a bit less than a third of the Americans favor the plan, a bit more than a third do not, and about a third are undecided. If such a huge measure does not get immediate widespread enthusiastic support, it is not a good sign. On Thursday morning in the very Conservative Oklahoman – my new Bible – where the readers’ letters are usually about how you should love America or leave it, or about how the President should be very very Christian, or how abortion is murder etc, etc, well, on Thursday, all the letters were about how the taxpayers should not have to save Wall Street.
Just a sign.

The interesting thing is that from both sides, they are against this plan for different reasons: on the left, they obviously do not want rich businessmen who benefited from years of Republican deregulations to be saved from their blunders and on the right, they see this plan as Socialism, which to them is synonymous with Soviet policies (cf. Previous posts).

So here is John’s conundrum. Either he does not sign the plan as a Senator and a majority does not sign it and the economy collapses; he does not sign the plan but the plan passes and is successful and he was not one of the saviors; he does sign the plan and he alienates the base who does not want the plan and his fellow Republicans who consider that regulating the market is Stalinist socialism.

Yesterday, at the beginning of the afternoon, Congressmen were saying that they were about to hit a deal. Two hours later, one of them came out of the room and announced that they were far from a deal yet, that there were some fundamental disagreements.
What happened in the meantime?
John arrived to Washington.
I’m not kidding.

In any case, all this is very exciting. Kind of in a pathetic way, but exciting all the same. I have never seen such a campaign, and apparently, a lot of people feel the same.
Really, my non-intellectualized gut feeling when I see McCain interviewed is that he knows he is fighting a lost battle. He knows there is no way he can win, so he is attempting the craziest moves: he picks a VP running mate who literally stutters when asked a serious question, whose body language clearly, unmistakebly shows she has no clue about anything except moose-hunting (I mean really, I can’t describe it but please view some of interviews on the net if you don’t have access to US TV channels), and whose lies and manipulations of investigations and pork-barrel politics are unveiled every single day; he approves ads saying that Obama wants to teach kindergartners sex education; then for ten days of a major economic crisis, he keeps saying the US economy is fundamentally strong before he finally declares he suspends his campaign to go solve this major crisis.

The cynical interpretation of all that is that while he is doing all those crazy things, the press is talking about him, and on November 4th, a big proportion will vote for the guy whose name is the most familiar.
This is working. When you look at this campaign, and when you add it to a very unpopular President who blundered during eight years, and you put on top of that an economic crisis, which historically is never good for the incumbent, then you would think that the margin between the two candidates would be 20 percentage points. Instead, they are in a dead heat. And not because Obama is running a bad campaign, like only our very own French Socialists know how to run.
It is quite unbelievable.

Well, I am looking forward to tonight.

Sleep well, John.