New and Improved: McCain-Palin

You see New and Improved! as a red slash on a label for dishwashing soap; now you see it on the Republican nominee. With the dishwashing soap you may get some claim of a new "secret" ingredient; with John McCain you get--John McCain.

The electorate has changed since 2004; there are more Democrats, relatively fewer Republicans. So, the question becomes, can McCain use Palin to re-sell himself as Reformer and Maverick, and appeal across party lines? He may envision himself as a new Teddy Roosevelt: the tough reformer--Teddy was also an imperialist--but at the same time, McCain is still stuck parroting almost the whole Bush-Cheney line on taxes, energy, business, the wars and foreign policy generally. By doing that, and having a strongly anti-abortion veep running beside him, he mobilizes the base.

But can he reach beyond it?

The answer: he's new and improved! Up until John McCain's speech at his convention, the Republicans seemed to pretend that the previous eight years of their party's control of the White House, and almost 12 years control of Congress just never happened. "They" controlled it, those people in "Warshington:" The Republicans are very good at surrealism.

Then Hero John, Maverick John, the New and Improved version stepped to the podium and made the most minimal reference to Bush--wasn't it lucky he'd been stuck in Washington--never even mentioning the incumbent Republican President by name!

But what does McCain offer? The only specifics, as if they, too, were new and improved, was the same agenda that has been tried with such devastating effects: tax cuts for the wealthy, getting government off your backs (hasn't the government done this: the sub-prime and housing crises are one of the results) and the nation "on offense" against her enemies. In fact, new and improved seems to include calling Russia's leadership names, and gift-wrapping Georgia as a rising democratic star in the East. The only apparent innovation is "drill here, drill now!" Er, along with all those other sources of energy that should be developed.

Funny thing, but the government's own office of Energy Information Administration says that if it were opened up in 2008, "first ANWR oil production would occur in 2018," at the earliest. That's oil on land; oil offshore not yet proven could take considerably longer, i.e. "drill, drill anywhere" is not a short-term solution that will help anyone but the oil industry.

New and improved also includes the veep selection: Sarah Palin will try to appeal to the white middle class voters that Obama had such a hard time reaching in the primaries. Personally, Palin may have what it takes: she's unknown and untried, attractive and sharp-spoken and appears to have an ego even bigger than McCain's. She's even posed in a red-white-and blue bikini, dandling a rifle on her hip, so the packaging sure has changed; it's new and improved!

But, regardless of the packaging, the contents haven't changed. The Democrats need to point out: the Republican formula hasn't worked for the people, but McCain really offers nothing different--except his puffy mug and Sarah Palin's sloppy hair. If the so-called "swing voters" vote for the appealing "hockey mom" and "the maverick," what they'll get is the same thing they got when they voted for the guy they thought they could enjoy a beer with: GW Bush.

Oh, McCain-Palin vaguely offers some change. New and improved McCain implies that his government would be "transparent," for example, but he never mentioned the thin-lipped secrecy of Bush-Cheney. However, there were some curious lacunae in the Republicans' presentation that gives me pause about that promise of "transparency."

Did you notice that there was hardly a mention of the economic problems the nation faced, virtually no mention of the challenge of global warming, no mention, except by implication, of the soaring deficits caused by the war McCain had promoted from before the invasion, and the tax-cuts he has more belatedly owned as his own (he campaigned against them in 2000).

But even more surreal than pretending that the previous eight years didn't exist, the presentation of John McCain's history totally expunged his first wife, his children by her (although they were in the convention hall and not looking happy), and his unpleasant divorce.

At least McCain admitted that he had "broken" under Vietnamese interrogation, but no one else dared mention this, nor point out that McCain really didn't fulfill the hero's profile. It was interesting that he credited two POW's with his survival, but he hasn't taken that experience to its logical conclusion--that we are all responsible for each other's welfare. Or rather, he doesn't seem to get it that government can be used to promote it.

The revelation that McCain had "broken" under questioning points out something even creepier about the Republican campaign:

There are whole areas of inquiry about the two Republican candidates that their campaign has tried to rule out as "private," or simply "you can't go there." The most obvious at the moment is Sarah Palin's family: whether the baby is hers or her daughter's, whether her behavior--if it is hers--prior to his birth was risky and ill-considered; whether a mother should spend the next two months campaigning while her baby is so small, and a "special needs" baby, at that. Ironically, it is the Republicans who are now claiming PC treatment to shield them from "sexism."

There are other issues, of course, one of which McCain breached himself--that he had broken under questioning, that he wasn't quite such a hero, after all. Another is his divorce of his first wife, who had waited for him while he was a POW, but who had been disfigured and partly maimed in a car accident; he dumped her for Cindy, who was pretty and very rich; his first wife is why they didn't get married until 1980--he had to get his divorce first.

It looks as if the McCain campaign would like to rule out other areas of questioning, too, like Sarah Palin's promotion of earmarks for Wasilla--even ones McCain had denounced publicly--her lack of preparedness for the governorship--she line-item vetoed many programs because, apparently, she knew nothing about them: the legislature later restored most of them because of their importance.

Other areas they would like to, well, just forget about, like the fact that the country has been under Republican domination (even since 2006), and we are in the shape we are in because GW Bush was so successful in passing his agenda--including putting a strongly "conservative" majority on the Supreme Court.

If I were a psychologist (I'm not), I might label the New and Improved McCain campaign, and the whole Republican convention, as a dissociative disorder: "People with dissociative disorders chronically escape their reality in involuntary, unhealthy ways ranging from suppressing memories to assuming alternate identities. The patterns of dissociative disorders usually develop as a reaction to trauma and function to keep difficult memories at bay." MayoClinic.com

With the repackaging, the Republicans have an extraordinary chance of retaining the White House in 2008--don't want those "other Americans" to gain it (no black boy better get in McCain's way)-- although it still looks as if Congress will be more Democratic in 2009.

Which brings us to the theme of this website: McCain really, probably genuinely, sees himself as another Teddy Roosevelt, who was also a "maverick" Republican. But TR was also an unabashed imperialist at the height of America's first imperial ventures, so the parallel is somewhat fitting.

However, the US is economically in much worse shape than it was in 1901; the dollar is under siege (although "recovering" some value with the world-wide recession); the US is in huge and growing debt to its most powerful competitors (China, especially), and Americans are suffering from the most class-based government in three generations. The US is still dominated by "the selfish class" highlighted in my eponymous book and John McCain doesn't propose to change that one iota, nor does Sarah Palin: they take it as a given. If the new and improved Republican ticket triumphs, the American empire has a much better chance of following the fifth century fate of Rome: bankruptcy and dissolution, since the "nation on offense" will mean more wars, endless wars, a new, new Cold War, maybe with both Russia and China, even more giddying heights of wealth accumulated by the selfish class, and a rapidly deteriorating domestic economy.

All the above and McCain's backhanded treatment of global warming--and his veep's denial of human causes--render the prospective global tragedy of a McCain victory even greater. Did the huge loss on the stock market on the eve of McCain's speech reflect investors' trepidation if he won? Probably not, but it would have been justified.