{"id":3100,"date":"2008-09-26T08:09:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-26T15:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2008\/09\/26\/crossing-that-rubicon\/"},"modified":"2008-09-26T08:09:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-26T15:09:00","slug":"crossing-that-rubicon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2008\/09\/26\/crossing-that-rubicon\/","title":{"rendered":"Crossing that Rubicon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps we are getting a good glimpse of what the “Leadership Style” of a John McCain’s presidency would look like, and no it is not pretty.\u00c2\u00a0 McCain seems set to put us on the course of a perpetual “Cliff-hanger” for American government\u00c2\u00a0— we will be on the edge of our seats, sweating the next chapter of a prolonged serial.<\/p>\n

The other part of the equation is\u00c2\u00a0a creeping\u00c2\u00a0“Youse Guys” proponent.\u00c2\u00a0 It is\u00c2\u00a0those rash judgements and areas of political posturing with Palin and with his political\u00c2\u00a0grand-standing\u00c2\u00a0which effectively\u00c2\u00a0screwed\u00c2\u00a0up or post-poned\u00c2\u00a0the deal between the Democratic Congress and the Bush Administration, and which is throwing that Ole Miss Debate for a loop.\u00c2\u00a0 The McCain \/ Palin campaign\u00c2\u00a0brings to mind the sort of logic behind those\u00c2\u00a0emails which circulated soon after 9\/11 which suggested that the way to defeat the Terrorists was by smearing pig blood about, or something<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 This may be the future of our foreign policy; this may be the future of our domestic policy — a bunch of “Too Clever by Half” measures which seem best suited for a Bar conversation after a few drinks — “Youse Guys, you see, what they should do is<\/em>…”.<\/p>\n

Then again, it’s probably pointless to consider the ramifications of a McCain presidency.\u00c2\u00a0 That ship may have sailed.\u00c2\u00a0 I get the feeling McCain is mostly being used as a set-up for a distraction at this point in time.\u00c2\u00a0 The better consideration may be what lays ahead after\u00c2\u00a0eight years of an\u00c2\u00a0Obama administration<\/a>.:<\/p>\n

We can now witness Palin’s most recent interview. It will not do to read the transcript.\u00c2\u00a0 Only while watching the actual video is it possible fully to appreciate the wisdom of Palin’s handlers in keeping her away from open microphones as much as possible: Even so, it seems to me obvious that this is the face of a future president.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps not this decade, but sometime in the next.\u00c2\u00a0 It is important to understand that — and, if not to accept it, then in some way to come to terms with it.\u00c2\u00a0 The trends that, as Lin argues in his book, hollow out any possibility of serious political discussion are precisely why Palin will be an ideal vehicle for a politics that evades deliberation, as well as the proxy for that segment of the American public (not a small part) that loathes it.\u00c2\u00a0 She will be better coached in the future, and learn the art of translating ignorance into arrogant self-confidence.\u00c2\u00a0 She was able to manage that on a state level, but will need a little more practice to pull it off on the larger public stage.\u00c2\u00a0 All it will take is time.<\/em><\/p>\n

I don’t quite buy that Sarah Palin is the Future.\u00c2\u00a0 I think more likely in the next eight years someone else can\u00c2\u00a0be\u00c2\u00a0plucked out and groomed for a\u00c2\u00a0successful marketing as\u00c2\u00a0the Great\u00c2\u00a0Opponent of\u00c2\u00a0Intellectualism (Intellectualism defined once again downward into the movie\u00c2\u00a0Idiocracy)– ala George W Bush eight years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Palin was taken out of that broiler four years too early.<\/p>\n

I don’t quite know the intellectual heft of Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, but I do know he has a story which warms the heart of Christian Conservatives, and also covers that “Ethnic Diversity” area which might suffice in broadening the base enough as he works out his power-backed “Reformer” chops — an Indian (India) who converted to a stark version of Catholicism, and he once wrote about performing an Exorcism.\u00c2\u00a0 He might just be The One.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps we are getting a good glimpse of what the “Leadership Style” of a John McCain’s presidency would look like, and no it is not pretty.\u00c2\u00a0 McCain seems set to put us on the course of a perpetual “Cliff-hanger” for American government\u00c2\u00a0— we will be on the edge of our seats, sweating the next chapter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}