Before the Campaigns Heat Up...

Everything seems anti-climatic after the conventions. I have to share the television with grand-daughters again, watching episodes from Animal Planet and Total Drama Island... John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning here in Colorado Springs today. I forgot to call for tickets so I will sit this out, try and read some fiction set in Tibet and Mongolia.

As our emotions deflate, there comes post-convention depression and a return of cynical viewpoints. The political blogs are going crazy flinging mud and accusations at each other. There are a few things I find unsettling, unfortunately all coming from the Republican side.

1) What is that growth on the left side of John McCain's face? It has been getting larger over the past few months, and at the convention was covered by a piece of plastic and makeup. If its cancer, then the prognosis is not good for the Senator from Arizona. I haven't seen any major news outlet mentioning it, and my sister, who's a nurse, pointed it out to me. John has a history of skin cancer and it would be a shame if he waits until after the elections are over to get it treated. This also explains the weird, distracting choice of the photo of the middle school from North Hollywood for the background during his acceptance speech. The green expanse of grass simulated the green screen effect during close ups, and the color created a jarring note, distracted viewers from looking closely at his face. An example of smoke and mirrors...

2) One of the things I never liked about the Bush administration, has been the way they have tried to force public opinion. When describing a situation or point of view, they come up with a couple of pithy phrases that get repeated by loyal team players at every opportunity. The silliness of it has been repeatedly used for comedic purposes on the Daily Show with John Stewart. If you utter a phrase long enough will people believe its true? The worst one of these, of course, has been "weapons of mass destruction." 

This style of hit and run was used again during interviews at the Republican convention, set pieces of attack on Obama and defense pieces of Palin. It makes people like Carly Fiorino, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Guliani look like sheeple. I was hoping that this form of group think would not take place and is why I am pessimistic that John McCain will actually be able to change the Republican establishment in Washington, which he is a part of.

3) Sarah Palin is beginning by telling little white lies. Does it matter if her speech writers wrote them or she herself did? But she's saying that she didn't support the Bridge to Nowhere, that she sold the governor's plane on ebay and made a profit, or that she didn't support Alaska's embattled Senator Ted Stevens. 

These are all easily checked facts and her detractors are having a field day. It may be that she can't help herself; in order to make people like you, to embellish stories with what you think they want to hear. We all do it at one time in our life, usually in adolescence. But it may signify that she has no problems stretching the truth and is amoral by nature. We have had 8 years of the worst examples of this kind of behavior, and is the best reason that the Republican Party needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. It must stop and be changed now.