11:53 AM CDT on Friday, October 3, 2008
John McCain is probably going to lose this election. The economic crisis, which he is ill equipped by training and interests to handle, threatens to wipe out his campaign. Though Barack Obama has shown no greater insight or skill in handling the looming disaster, Mr. McCain's personal deficit on economic policy redounds to his opponent's benefit.
But Mr. McCain has gifts that Mr. Obama does not, convictions and leadership traits that the country could very soon need more desperately than a policy expertise. Mr. McCain should risk that Americans don't want to be mollycoddled and manipulated. He would do well to buy commercial time on national television and deliver a speech that goes something like this:
My friends, I am neither young nor eloquent, handsome nor smooth. But I have lived a long life, much of it in service to America in war and in peace. And I have always stood for straight talk. There has been no time in our nation's recent history when the American people more needed to hear the plain truth from their leaders. A fundamental reason our country faces economic catastrophe is that we have built our lives around running from truths about the American way of life.
Washington has run from the truth. Wall Street has run from the truth. And if we're honest with ourselves, all of us have, in one way or another, run from the truth.
We have accepted the lie that we can live exactly as we want to live, with no concern for the consequences. We have taken the blessings of liberty and prosperity and turned them into a curse of debt slavery —“ bondage that will be visited on our children, and our children's children, if we don't change.
Everybody has a theory about how we got into this mess, and it's usually one that absolves them and their party from blame. My friends, I'm here to tell you that this crisis is the Republicans' fault. It's the Democrats' fault. It's the fault of every one of us who believed in the fairy tale of a free lunch.
It's time for all Americans to take responsibility for what we've done. It's time for all Americans to pull together to help our families, our neighbors and our country through hard times.
I will not lie to you and tell you that the road ahead will be easy. I will not insult you by giving you simple villains, simple heroes or simplistic solutions. As the song says, everybody wants to get to heaven, but nobody wants to die. My fellow Americans, all of us must sacrifice to endure the trials that history sends our way and to rebuild our nation on a solid foundation of honor, truth and plainspoken virtue.
I know something about sacrifice. And I know something about the way life can break your pride. I was a cocky Navy aviator who thought he was invulnerable. Then I was shot out of the sky and spent five years in prison. That experience did not kill me. It made me stronger. It taught me how much I loved my God, my family and my country —“ and what trials I could endure for the sake of that love.
I am a patriot. I believe we are a nation of patriots, of men and women who are ready and willing to put country first. But over the years, our leaders, Republican and Democratic, have asked us to do little more than to go shopping, to vote for them and to blame other people for what's wrong with America. Anything to keep us from facing the truth and changing our ways.
As your president, I will ask you to do hard things. I, too, will do hard things for the good of this great nation. Serious times call for serious leadership. In his first speech as prime minister, with his free nation facing the might of Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill refused to mislead the British people about the gravity of their situation. We remember today his words to them: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
Churchill did not give cheap optimism. He, too, had fought and suffered for his nation, both on the battlefield and in Parliament. He had known the joy of victory and the humiliation of defeat. What Churchill, from his incomparable experience, could offer his people was the gold standard of hope. Hope is the conviction that whatever suffering we must go through, goodness and right shall prevail.
Today, when I survey the gathering storm, I am certain that if we, the people, stand together without fear or favor, victory will be ours. I ask you to give me the privilege of leading this great nation in a time when heroes will be made, and all good men and women must come to the aid of their country.
Thank you, and God bless America.
Rod Dreher is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. His e-mail address is rdreher@dallasnews.com.
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Rod Dreher: The speech John McCain should give
(7 posts)-
Posted Saturday Oct 4, 2008 13:19 #
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damn, that 's some good points. I choose option C - best of both of the dudes and dudettes.
Posted Saturday Oct 4, 2008 15:02 # -
Of course McCain didn't always do what you are saying. He came back and switched wives, married Griselda and her bucks. He played with Keating. He didn't do a thing for the Vets and the VA. Telling Americans to stop buying all the cheap "stuff" they can from China, via Walmart, is a good thing, and telling them to save and not spend more than they can pay for on their credit cards is all good stuff - but he doesn't have any track record to speak of in that regard. McCain is not a Churchill or a DeGaulle, not a Roosevelt or even an Eisenhower. He's a guy that got shot down, had a tough time and won't let anyone forget it. There are lots of people that we need more thn either of these candidates, but they won't run and who can blame them. So out of these two I am far more inclined to look to Obama than to McCain. McCain is too close to Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld and the neocons for me.
Posted Saturday Oct 4, 2008 15:45 # -
Speaking of neo cons, I noticed in the bio of the writer -that I looked into afterwards- that he is considered a sort of neo con (a 'granola neo con').
When he mentions that we have lived off credit, I know many people, as I did, might think he was talking about personal consumption. But it certainly can be attributed to how our nat'l govm't has spent. I read something recently that said that the Iraq war was the first war that the US has engaged in WHOLLY ON CREDIT (deficit spending). That is unbelievable. That Iraq enterprise was animated by the neo con philosophies in which this writer apparently must particpate in some way. After all, we must liberate the world, regardless of cost.
My source was the book, the Three Trillion Dollar war 'written by nobel laureat stegliz
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Trillion-Dollar-War-Conflict/dp/0393067017
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/01/the-three-trill.htmlBut I like his idea that each candidate has good traits. I have not heard a word from either of these candidates in this mess yet. Obama is obviously playing a conservative game plan now (!) and running ground plays just to run the clock out. He does not want to screw up his lead.
I agree about spatny's criticisms of mccain, but, tho not perfect, he has suffered and served his country courageously, and that might be an essential attribute for this time. This is the music the author of the editorial was playing.
I mentioned in another post that I winced when I heard Palin show her ignorance of important matters of doctrine/approach ("the bush doctrine""), but I also *winced* when I heard Obama at the DNC say, after promising a ton of goodies, that he was going to give 95 pct of americans a tax cut. Huh? The gov't has no money - we are deficit spending everywhere - and he is going to give me an extra $600? Keep the money, prioritize correctly, get the heck out of a place that has nothing to do with 9-11, invest in alternative fuels to increase energy independence etc etc.
Oh, and Barack, don't forget to put your sweater on when addressing the nation to show how we should all conserve. A penny saved of gas is going to help our men and women in Afghanistan.
Posted Saturday Oct 4, 2008 16:39 # -
Look - this election is a choice between more of the same and something different. Of course, in the end, the whole game is this: Will enough people go into the booth and vote for a black man? There is no other question here. It has been that way since the primaries started, since the fundraising started. It looks like the answer is yes, but we will not know until Nov. 5th. Anything else, the issues, the personalities, experience, age, all that - is meaningless compared to that one question. On paper, Obama has this by a mile. The Repubs are quaking, because there will be indictments coming for those that grabbed billions. But will enough of the good burghers - Dems and Independents - actually vote for him. I don't think anyone knows the answer.
Posted Saturday Oct 4, 2008 22:17 # -
He's a black man... I guess. His mom was a WASPY white presbyterian from Kansas, Dorothy Frigging Gale. We have found the 6 million dollar politician, all things to all people, Elite Ivy educated, but lives and works in the Southside of Chicago, black guy, but with a white mom and comfortable playing poker in the back rooms and working the machinary of power, usually the bailiwick of white folks. The genetic phenotype happens to show up as a guy with characteristics consistant w/ negroid homo sapiens.
What if , by chance, we lived in a world where lighter skin pigmentation, and lighter color and texture of hair expressed themselves dominantly, instead of the reverse? He'd be another ivy educated 'do gooder' person , maybe working as a pd lawyer, working on the STAFF of some presidential candidate as a strategist, or maybe as a senator like durbin.
but here's spatny's point...
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I just noticed the following yahoo news item on Karl Rove predicting Obama. I believe that he is basically making a clarion call to the conservative base, If you don't come out, brother barack is in. Kind of making them picture it in their minds. The man is a genius strategist and spinmeister+ - he knows that people DO react to the music and he knows how to play music.
Obama clinches on Rove map
Mike Allen Sun Oct 5, 11:22 AM ET
With 30 days until Nov. 4, Karl Rove projects that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) would get at least 273 electoral votes —“ three more than are needed to win —“ if the presidential election were held today.
But Rove warns that this race is “susceptible to rapid changes,— so no definite prediction is possible.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081005/pl_politico/14294
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he was taught by another genius. Lee Atwater (remember Willie Horton?), who also knew how to spin.there is a documentary out on him called 'Boogie Man': The Paradox Of Lee Atwater. I heard an interview with the author of this film on NPR recently...worth checking out if you are interested the spin / music thing. Curiously, Atwater himself was a lover of music and was a musician.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94931206
Posted Sunday Oct 5, 2008 13:51 # -
Here is a guy who winced at both veeps-in-waiting during their debate.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/129266.html
I have to admit that I winced when Joe B mentioned '...in my neighborhood...at the Home Depot...' through his capped teeth. Yeah, I would expect to see him there :) This article described him as, 'the scrappy millionaire from scranton' and likened Palin to a 'Waffle House waitress calling us 'hon' and filling our coffee'. It's like we are watching projections of people or characters in a movie.
Tying together candidates-as-facades and the spinmeister post above, I recall the movie Being There, where the last line is,+
President: Life is a state of mind.
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Chance the Gardener might be my write-in for the election.Here is Chance, kinda 'behind the scenes', but really reminding us that we consume the facades since we saw him as a certain character throughout the movie.
***Gosh, only just now did I realize that this scene was *probably not* a series of outtakes, but a scene that the director told the actor to mangle; thus we are still seeing the facades even here. This is another level that I had not understood before. Either interpretation confirms that we only perceive and consume facades. Note: this movie was done before showing outtakes was a typical thing to do in dvds. ***
Facades? Wasn't McCain's suffering for his country real in the Hanoi Hilton, and isn't Barack really black, and isn't the economic crisis really a crisis?
Posted Sunday Oct 5, 2008 16:41 #
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