Deadblogging the final debate
I was flipping back and forth with the Phillies-Dodgers finale so the best assessment I can provide is:
1) It was a stellar performance, certain to achieve victory for the Phillies.
2) Having spent decades in the construction trades, I know many plumbers. Some are good friends. And they all know I think every one of them is overpaid. But none of them are whiners like Joe the Plumber. I’ve known thousands of people just as motivated, just as hardworking, who have and still get by on an income a fourth as large as Joe’s and who don’t whine about taxes and yammer about progressive taxation like it’s pure socialism. Nor, for that matter, do they equate socialism with some sort of vast conspiracy to steal from the productive.
Joe the Plumber’s complaints are drenched in unrestrained greed. I’ll save my sympathy for those with real grievances about very real unmet needs.
3) John McCain, like Bob Dole before him, demonstrated pragmatism, good snarkasm and a loveable curmudgeon attitude that was appealling. In his last campaign.
All he had to do to be more competitive was to bring back his earlier persona. But he can’t. As he’s grown older, the jokes went stale, the campaign methods were copied from others. Instead of innovation, we got canned leftovers from a worn out guy with nothing new in his repertoire.
And like Dole, he’s proven to be far less of a politician than he was previously perceived to be. Both were once skilled marksmen, but they reached their last campaign with blunderbusses loaded with birdshot. Which is great for scattering pigeons but doesn’t even alleviate the pigeon poop on all the statues.
4) And the saddest reality is that McCain really was the best the GOP had.
5) It’ll take the GOP 8 years to locate anyone with any campaign aptitude to do better. Unless they can sign Manny Ramirez to lead them in 2012.
