Wednesday, August 06, 2008

projection: John McCain's primary tool

So we have two major candidates for the presidency this year.

One of them is a celebrity who has frequently appeared on the small and big screens according to IMDB, including The Daily Show 12 times, Letterman 8 times, Jay Leno 10 times, and Larry King 9 times. He has not only had cameos on Saturday Night Live but has hosted it. He was in Beyond the Glory, had a cameo in Wedding Crashers, 24 and numerous documentaries such as Why We Fight and Port Town. His autobiography was made into a TV movie in 2005.

One of them is a notorious media darling. Reporters have on several occasions written about how this candidate wines and dines the media with cookouts and vast quantities of free booze, and about how reporters found themselves referring to this candidate's campaign as "we." He also recently took a trip to Europe and the Middle East in the middle of a presidential campaign.

One of them has a weak grasp of foreign policy. He frequently confuses Sunnis with Shi'ites, he cracks inappropriate jokes about sober matters of war and peace, and lacks a basic working knowledge of the timeline of the Iraq War.

One of them is a serial flip flopper. He has, in a relatively brief period of time, moved from hard-liner to centrist and back to hard-liner, having flip flopped along the way on abortion, tax cuts, lobbyist money in campaigns (he in fact doesn't support a reform bill he himself introduced), ethanol, torture, and affirmative action. In fact, one site catalogs 72 flip flops.

One of them is of highly dubious religious credibility. He's suddenly started hawking his faith recently, but used to claim another religion, and has never been baptized as an adult despite claiming to have attended evangelical services for 15 years. It is considered a newsworthy event when he actually shows up to church, because reporters found no evidence of him attending regularly before this past July.

The other one is Barack Obama.

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