Oh hey, McCain seems like a pretty great guy now
Posted by: andy in Politics, tags: election, john mccain, President, sarah palin
When I stayed up late last week watching the drama unfold in the U.S. election, I was keeping up with the opinions of people that weren’t holograms by seeing what all the Americans that I follow on Twitter were saying. It was a fun way of gauging the zeitgeist in America at the time, I think that all but one of the people that I saw tweets from were Democrat/pro-Obama, so naturally they were pretty excited. One thing that I did notice was that when John McCain gave his concession speech (which was admirable considering it was way past his bed-time) lots of people commented on how gracious his speech was, and all of a sudden he’d managed to elevate himself above the negative campaigning that had kept his campaign wading in the mud for the past few months.
It was in that moment I realised that if we had been watching ‘McCain the loser’ for the past year that a lot more people might have wanted to vote for him. For me, we were seeing the real John McCain in those few minutes for the first time in well over a year, the John McCain that I actually thought would actually make a pretty good candidate (and a pretty good President) when I saw him on a few Daily Show interviews and also in a couple of articles I read online. That McCain was a man that I could respect because of the content of his character and the way that he held himself, after he sold out his own beliefs it felt as if I was being forced to respect him because he is a war hero (respect he obviously deserves, but I did feel it was rammed down our throats somewhat).
It made me wonder who would be President elect right now if McCain had stayed true to himself throughout the campaign rather than pandering to the interests of people that he wouldn’t have necessarily seen eye to eye with a few years ago. I understand that the fine art of compromise is all part of the political game, but if you bend over backwards for everyone then it becomes pretty obvious, pretty quickly, that you don’t have too much of a spine, and if I know Americans, that is not a quality that they particularly care for. Hopefully now that the election is over the McCain of a few years ago can return and do some good, not as much as he would have achieved if he had become President, of course, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t want all of that “saving the world” pressure that Barack’s under now anyway.
Of course, I’m pretty sure that if JM had spent a little more time thinking up his pick for Vice President beyond “oh, she looks nice” then things would have been a bit closer, but it sure as hell wouldn’t have been more interesting.
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