This is silly. Haven’t you noticed that an empty suit is raking in $30 million a month and just trounced The Clinton Machine(TM) by running on a vague theme of Hope ‘n’ Change, and looking like a cool young GQ cover guy?
Joe Liberman is yesterday’s news — which is exactly what the people who aren’t going to vote for McCain right now think about the latter. We know who Joe is, we’ve been all through his “maverick” drama. Totally 20th century. Boring.
If McCain wants to move people who *aren’t* going to vote for him right now, he needs something other than a pale copy of himself. Vote For The Two White Guys Who Might As Well Be Your Father is not going to work.
Jindal would certainly neutralize the hey I’m cool I’m biracial Obama thingy. But folks are not going to vote for the ersatz when they can get the real thing, so that’s just a way to lose by a smaller margin.
My advice would be to pick a favorite son, a popular governor, who can bring home a swing state, or else someone who appeals to older married white women, Hillary’s natural demographic, and a group of people who, unlike their younger sisters, are not necessarily feeling like teenyboppers at a 1964 Beatles Concert when they contemplate Obama. McCain is only going to win if “serious” beats “cool” this season.
For that reason, actually, I also think on the issues he should instead of running on the Bush record, four more years, with wrinkles here and there, instead follow the Democrats hysterical cries of disaster just around the corner and *magnify* them — and then dare them to get concrete. The Democrats have tapped into a vein of vague anxiety among Americans. McCain can’t ignore that anxiety. It’s real, and it will sweep Mr. Hope ‘n’ Change into the White House unless a better alternative is available.
The *better* alternative would be someone with concrete plans, because where the Democrats are vulnerable is in the fact that no one really likes their concrete plans for solving problems. That’s why they stick to vague. People do worry about climate change — but whenever the Democrats suggest their favorite solution (living in huts and eating organic sawgrass) people get nauseous. People think not only that the price of gas is outrageous, but that there’s a problem with relying on fossil fuels. But when provided with Democrat “solutions” — *more* gas tax! Take the bus! Sue OPEC! — again, they gag.
John McCain should say: yes, folks, they’re *right*. All is not fine and dandy. The nation faces serious issues, and we thank our friends across the aisle for raising our awareness about them. But folks, their solutions stink. Maybe it’s not their fault, because they’re all trial lawyers and union teachers and bureaucrats, so all they can think of is meetings and new laws and more administrators, and they can’t imagine that *you* folks — plain folks, entrepreneurs with new ideas, businessmen with new businesses, heck even homemakers with ideas — are the most powerful agent of hope ‘n’ change we have. Not the government. Not the same old tired solutions from 1975 and 1965.
So what we *need* here is a way to unleash the creativity and power of the American people. Government needs to set up the framework, maybe, including lines of communication, formulate fair rules of competition, maybe provide a little seed money here and there, like the X-Prize that’s got private people designing better spaceships than NASA for a lot less money. But then government needs to get the heck out of your way. It needs *not* to be taxing away so much of your money that you can hardly breathe, can hardly *think* about investing in your own new ideas.
Barack Obama gives a great speech. I listen to him and I feel inspired myself. He’s right. We *do* need hope ‘n’ change. But it’s Barack’s sad fate that he’s running with the party that, more than any other, hasn’t moved on an inch since 1968, whose ideas haven’t changed in near half a century — I know, because I was alive then, ha ha, and I remember. So, sure, we need some change. But the change isn’t going to come from the Democrats. (You haven’t seen much change from the Democratic Congress you elected in 2006, have you?) I’ll bring you real change, and the change *you* can believe in — because it will come from you.
