Some thoughts about McCain and Palin

I heard on TV last night that McCain can't get more than a hundred or so people to come to any of his campaign talks when he is there on his own. But with Palin along, thousands come to see them. So, instead of the usual strategy of using the presidential and vice presidential candidates to give speeches separately (dividing the forces to reach more people), McCain's strategists have decided to have him always campaign together with Palin.

My thoughts on this are that McCain, who has already shown himself to be an angry, mean-tempered misogynist, will soon come to hate Palin. She--not he--is the attraction. And if they get into the White House, she will be the one who attracts the most attention there, too. He will have to send her off on foreign missions all the time, just to get her out of the way -- and we know how experienced she is in foreign affairs. She's already told us how her state is located right next to Russia -- and that from some parts of Alaska, you can even see Russian land! Wow! What more could we ever want in a foreign affairs expert? Especially one who has already told us she would support a war with Russia in defense of Georgia? But what will she do with the important passed-on information from Bush that Pootie-Poot Putin can be trusted because Bush looked into his eyes and saw his soul?

Imagine the inner turmoil taking place in John McCain right now. His anger--especially against women--is well known. This man once blazed out at his wife because, while straightening his hair with her fingers, she made the comment, "You're getting a little thin on top, John." His answer (made in front of several reporters): "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." (Nice guy.) Now he is realizing that the only reason he may get to be president is because of the woman running with him. He can't even attract a decent number of people to his speeches unless she is at his side. One has to suspect that he will take it out on her if they make it to the White House. But she is a "pit bull with lipstick." I wonder who will win that war?

In order to learn more about Cindy's marriage with McCain, you may want to read a very informative article in this week's New Yorker Magazine at: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/09/15/080915fa_fact_levy
The title of the article is The Lonesome Trail: Cindy McCain's non-traditional campaign

In this article we learn that for most of their marriage, Cindy and John McCain have seen each other only on weekends. On the campaign trail in 2000, Cindy McCain remarked that “for most of the twenty years we’ve been married he’s been in Washington all week while I’m in Arizona with the kids. I’ve never spent this much time with my husband.’’

Cindy has kept many secrets from her husband, and tells about them in a kind of half-joking way. The stories that Cindy McCain tells all tend to have the same elements: secrecy, unilateral action, revelation. She is a kind of blond Lucille Ball in these tales, always up to something, never wanting to be found out by Ricky. But her madcap (if genteel) fifties-housewife sitcom persona is complicated by the more troublesome aspects of these anecdotes. She often leaves out a detail or two, omissions that change the shade of the story.

Also, Cindy appears to be afraid of making even a tiny error during the campaign. It makes you wonder what she would have to face at home from her husband, should such a "terrible" thing happen.

As the author of the New Yorker article puts it: In the time that I spent with the McCains, Cindy never looked me in the eye, even when she was speaking to me. Unlike Michelle Obama, Cindy McCain has had no public schedule of events that the press is invited to cover. Requests for access are frequently met with evasion.

In April, at a barbecue for the travelling press that the McCains hosted at their ranch in Cottonwood, guests said McCain kept herself apart from the group while her husband indulged in his usual japery with the “jerks,” as he affectionately calls reporters. If the group was on the lawn, Cindy moved to the porch. If the porch was invaded, she drifted elsewhere. She was like a bird that stays within view but takes flight if you come too close.

The goals of the press are irreconcilable with Cindy McCain’s craving for privacy, secrecy, discretion. A member of the McCain staff told me that Cindy was “scared shitless” of harming her husband’s campaign. After Michelle Obama’s endlessly replayed comment about being really proud of her country for the first time in her adult life, Cindy McCain told a crowd at a campaign stop, “I don’t know about you, if you heard those words earlier, I am very proud of my country.” A few weeks later, McCain talked about that remark to Jill Zuckman, of the Chicago Tribune: “It just spilled out of my mouth. And then I got back on the bus and I thought, Oh, my God, what have I done? I thought, Oh, I should never have opened my mouth. How did that happen? I’ll put duct tape over it.”

It sounds to me like Cindy McCain is a woman who has been taught by her husband to "know her place." The McCains obviously do not have the traditional "family values" marriage that Republicans love to talk about. It's ironic, isn't it, that the Obamas have a far more traditional family than the McCains do!