The Great Republican Crack-up of 2008

I am pretty partial to Hemingway, but this campaign is very F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is the great Republican crack-up of 2008, and in this drama, the great truth is this: McCain is Boris Karloff, from the horror movies of old, Obama is Tony Bennett, the wonderful crooner of smooth, with one of the great presidential temperaments of our times. This election will be won by a man of great presidential temperament, against a man of great and uncontrollable temper he cannot even attempt to hide.

With markets crashing and the economy sinking, McCain shows up at another debate looking angry and nasty, his face tense with some inner contempt that dominates his presence, throwing tiresome slops of mud to voters who hunger for reassurance and substance, his face twisted and eyeballs rolling like Karloff in the horror movies. Obama by contrast is Frank Sinatra during his mellower moments, or even better, Tony Bennett by starlight, looking cool in a crisis, calm in a storm, the serious man for serious times, calmly unflappable. Obama talks about healthcare while McCain talks about Ayers. Obama talks about education while McCain talks about ACORN. Obama talks about jobs while McCain grunts and snarls and sighs in ways that are devastating to him on split-screen television.

It is the great Republican crack-up of 2008. Republican economics brings the nation to the brink. Republican fearmongering erodes the very confidence essential to the markets while turning off whole swaths of independent voters. A Republican president, whom McCain supported 90 percent of the time, disappears during an economic crisis, sneaking into fundraisers through the back door to hide his support of his anointed heir from voters who demand powerful change.

The House Republican campaign committee is virtually bankrupt, while Senate Republicans desperately try to hide from the truth of their overwhelming support for their disappearing president and their unwavering obstruction and filibusters against any hope for change.

While McCain looks like Boris Karloff in the movies, dishing sludge in all directions, we now see endangered Republicans trying to distance from the disaster, even saying friendly words about Obama while the sludge dump continues from the top of the ticket, and the ridiculously unqualified power abuser from Alaska, having finally ended her lie to nowhere about the Bridge to Nowhere, continues to inflame the angry rightist base of the Republican Party that is so radically out of touch with the heart and soul of Middle America.

McCain even uses the debate to attack and demean the concerns of women for their very health on the matter of abortion. What kind of angry, out-of-touch, strange kind of attack is this? Trivializing, demeaning, ridiculing and insulting women concerned about their health on the most important decision of their lives?

It is conservative Chris Buckley who gets to the heart of the matter: Obama has a truly presidential temperament, while McCain has a truly extreme temper, and after eight years of Bush, the nation prefers the smooth and urbane crooner who talks of serious things in serious ways, to the angry face that is all that remains of Republican rule in a nation that yearns to turn the page and leave this past behind.