The week that will be remembered....the spiral downward of John McCain...at least for now...
I remember, clearly, when Barack Obama announced that he was the ‘Presumptive Nominee’, the first thing that came out of John McCain’s mouth was town hall meetings. Ten weekly town hall meetings to be exact.
Many said this would be wonderful, on the scale and scope of the Lincoln-Douglass debates. Many said this would bring democracy back to the process, let the voters see these candidates undressed, real. Well, it isn’t happening.
I was against such posturing from the beginning, primarily because it would give candidate John McCain a chance to stand on the stage with Barack Obama, size him up while sizing and shoring 'John McCain' up. After last week’s tour through the Middle East and Europe, we can comfortably state, the town hall meetings will not happen.
Through this week I saw two different campaigns.
The Obama Campaign. Senator Obama dealt directly with dignitaries of Iraq and Afghanistan, with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki endorsing the Obama Timeline for getting U.S. Troops out of Iraq. Then the trip to Afghanistan. Obama met with the President and witnessed firsthand the need of more U.S.Troops on the ground there and not in Iraq. The big crux of all this was the look of Barack Obama. He looked presidential, he looked like a leader. The most astounding thing is that all the heads of state, important diplomatic dignitaries wanted to meet and speak with Barack Obama. But the most startling thing of this whole trip was the blunt and direct ignoring of the Bush Administration by all of these countries and looking to Barack Obama as the new face of diplomacy from the United States of America, not John McCain. John McCain, nor George W. Bush will ever be met in Europe like Barack Obama was greeted. The waving of U.S. flags, excitement of the over 200,000 Germans in Berlin sealed the Bush Administration's fate, and McCain's fate to a point.
All of this unhinged the McCain Campaign. Why? I don’t know. It was John McCain and the RNC who kept a clock ticker about Obama not visiting Iraq and never have gone to Afghanistan. It was their daring that put Barack on this worldwide tour. And now they had to sit back and take it. The McCain Campaign had to watch major U.S. Media and International Media follow Obama’s every step and report on it.
McCain whined about unfair media coverage, along with unloading very disingenuous ads that were just straight up lies. Why he did this is beyond me? But, knowing politics, you don’t go negative unless you must and something in the weeds has to be alarming for the McCain Campaign to go this route.
"It's hard for me to understand Sen. McCain's argument. He was telling me I was supposed to take this trip. He suggested it, thought it was a good idea," the senator told reporters, some of whom were seated on the ground in front of him and or standing on the sidewalk across.
"John McCain has visited every one of these countries post-primary that I have. He has given speeches in Canada, in Colombia, Mexico," he continued. "So it doesn't strike me that we've done anything different than the McCain campaign has done, which is to recognize that part of the job of the next president and commander-in-chief is to forge effective relationships with our allies."
So for all those who are still rallying for town hall meetings, the question is why? Who stand to gain from these town hall meetings? Who needs free media because their campaign is sucking an egg? Who gains to be seen with the most popular and important politician right now? Surely not Obama, but McCain.
Let’s wait for the official debates. Let’s get our vice-presidential nominee. Let’s finish our convention. Let’s work hard to elect Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States of America. And surely, let’s forget about any town hall meetings in the very near future.
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