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I was wrong about the first McCain/Obama debate. A third of the way through
the event, I said to one of my guests, "My guy is getting creamed!" Note
that I did not say, "My candidate is being beaten into the ground." I don't
have a candidate. Priests, like columnists, are not supposed to endorse a
candidate. But one of the candidates is from my state and my city, and we
shared a pulpit once. So of course I hope he wins. But that doesn't mean I
endorse him. As I have said repeatedly in this column, I think he will lose
because the country is not ready for a smart, attractive, charismatic man --
if he has skin slightly darker than a Sicilian's. Got it? |
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I figured that John McCain was very effective, especially with those who were most likely to be watching -- those who hadn't made up their minds and perhaps had never listened to Barack Obama. Sen. McCain treated him contemptuously. He told my guy often that he was, in effect, dumb, disloyal, incompetent, not to be trusted with the responsibilities of the presidency and "just didn't get it." In the language of the streets, he "dissed" him. He cut my guy short when he tried to reply, blamed him for the economic crisis, refused to look at him when he was telling him how worthless he was and finally could not suppress an angry expression when Obama scored the occasional point. Sen. Obama elected to play the role of the gentleman who simply would not (or maybe could not) respond in kind. "Go after him," I screamed. "He's just being a gentlemen," my friend insisted. "Nice guys," I shouted, citing a one-time manager of the Cubbies, "finish last!" Naturally I couldn't sleep that night. At 3 a.m., I crawled out of bed and turned on a cursed machine to read the data from the instant surveys. |
_ sKeep in touch... |
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It turned out that my guy had done the creaming, according to both surveys. I had been flat-out wrong (as they say in the old country). The respondents overwhelmingly favored my onetime pulpit partner. After all the mud-slinging of the campaign, an aloof, articulate, dignified candidate, given even a half a chance (the most Jim Lerher gave him) actually appealed to the audience. I still don't know what to make of it. However, I began to understand how wrong I was in my preliminary judgment when the second phase of the debate flooded into the blogosphere and the "McCain surrogates" repeated their boss' arguments about Sen. Obama's general uselessness. They were livid with the rage required of one to be a candidate's surrogate. If those eejits (as the Irish would say) are that angry, my guy must have really won the debate, though they were clearly winning the debate about the debate. Sen. McCain has made four major mistakes since the convention -- he chose an unknown vice presidential candidate, he elected to choose a style that constantly "dissed" his rival, he "suspended" his campaign to grandstand in the financial crisis and he claimed credit for bringing Democrats and Republicans together to find a solution, just before the Republicans torpedoed the "solution" (which failure he also blamed on his favorite scapegoat). At this writing there are mutterings in Republican quarters about throwing Gov. Sarah Palin under the bus. It might, however, be wiser to ease Sen. McCain toward the door.
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 A Stupid, Unjust, And Criminal War: Iraq 2001-2007 Father Greeley calls to task those who justified, planned and executed the war and reminds us that God weeps at the destruction of war, whether lives lost are ‘ours’ or ‘theirs.’  Order
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