Leaving aside the absolute disingenuousness of John McCain's claim he is elevating the financial crisis to a non-partisan issue by plopping the Presidential race into the middle of the negotiations in Washington, it wouldn't seem that the whole thing needs that much thought -- at least from his engagingly simplistic point of view. After all, his solution to the millenium old Gordian Knot that Iraq's Sunnis and Shias have entangled themselves in is to tell each side to "":
For all the national attention surrounding John McCain's two highly anticipated, protest-ridden commencement speeches in New York last week, the Senator actually saved some of his best material for the crowd that gathered on Friday behind closed doors in the back of the Regency Hotel.In a small, mirror-paneled room guarded by a Secret Service agent and packed with some of the city's wealthiest and most influential political donors, Mr. McCain got right to the point.
"One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, 'Stop the bullshit,'" said Mr. McCain, according to Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, an invitee, and two other guests. (as reported in the New York Observer in May via Brendan Nyhan)
The battle between these religious cults has been brewing over a thousand years and involves a culture, language, ideology and political and economic forces John McCain knows nothing about (he doesn't even know the difference between the two sides). The financial crisis involves, by his own reckoning, a problem that goes back only 26 years, since he has been in Congress and to which he contributed and had a central part to play in an earlier foreshadowing (the Savings and Loan scandal). He knows it much better.
Indeed John McCain has been a player, an insider, an intimate with the Wall Streeters that constitute one side in this (I guess the rest of us are the other side). So you would think it would be so much easier. All he needs to do is sit each of us down and say, in all seriousness: Stop the bullshit. Mission accomplished. Then he can go back to campaigning and debating.
I guess we agree about one thing. Stopping the bullshit.
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When you are in politics in America, it seems bullshit is like breathing. If you don't use it, you die.
Even a cursory study of the sociology of elections in a 2 party system show how difficult it is to be bull-free and get nominated or elected. You must promise enough (i.e. lie) to each partisan group (women, oil, health care, military, god, etc) to ensure they will pick you. Finding a way to do this honestly would be novel but unlikely in our fractured society. The expectation that you will say a thing is vitally important to win a voting bloc regardless of how you actually feel is almost a recipe for the conventions.
I vote that in Presidential races that the loser (from whatever party) for the Prez position is automatically the VP.
I'm so over it all...I just wish that Biden and Palen had never come into the picture. If the candidates aren't strong enough to stand for the position on their own two feet, then take the "strongest" of both parties and put them together in the WH.
Maybe then we'd see some political ("party") reforms. If we were really lucky, they'd throw in some more reforms for political coverage. Take the "hollywood media & sound-bite drama" and half truths out of the cwap across the board.
I wasn't born with a Democrat or Republican brand stamped on my ass and I'd really like to keep it that way.. for some reason, though, over & over all these years, I have to keep having the one that's temporary tattooed there & Dictated by our Politics, changed.
I'd really like to vote under the label of just "American Citizen"
You make a good point, Mike.
I just wish the general public was a little better at seeing through the bullshit. It never ceases to amaze me how people eat up the most obvious lies, so long as the bullshit is stated loudly and repetitively...
abc,
You are right, the repetition is key.
I would welcome a UK style of campaign where ads, lies and bull (redundancy alert) are limited to a few short weeks before the election and, if memory serves, stops just before voting. This nearly 2 years of crap is overwhelming.
Here is something McCain and Palin should read, a good capsule summary of the whole Shia vs Sunni thing:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2803/whats-the-difference-betw…
You know something Revere, I could say the same thing for Kennedy and Kerry too and Pelosi, Reid.
You are right about one thing. Stop the bullshit.