vagyakartha

With long nights and longer nightmares fast approaching, this may not seem the time for daydreaming. Even less so when the nebulous dream's protagonist is Senator McCain. But then, isn't a realistic daydream an oxymoronic waste of time?

Senator McCain recently pulled his campaign staff out of Michigan. RealClearPolitics’ poll of polls shows that he trails Senator Obama by just over 10 percentage points there. The recently released New York Times-CBS News poll shows him trailing Senator Obama by 14% nationwide, against the RCP poll’s 8.2%.

It may be unseemly and premature for Senator McCain formally to concede the presidential race at this stage, the consequences for future Republican candidates would be severe. And, the Grand Old Party certainly does not deserve to become the Capitulate And Run Party.

Nevertheless, I dream of him calling off his campaign, returning his unspent federal funds as his symbolic contribution toward shrinking the ballooning deficit and announcing in a national address that he will work with Senator Obama and his party colleagues in Congress in putting the country first.

It seems almost a certainty that Senator Obama will be the next president, one with an almost unassailable majority in Congress. That majority is likely to be far more left-leaning than any congressional majority in recent memory. There is a clear and present danger in that. Senator Obama’s apparent tendency toward sensible economic policies, even when the stimulus of a large deficit is warranted, could well be overwhelmed by Speaker Pelosi’s strong leftward lurch.

However vociferous the Republican opposition may be to such pulls, it is unlikely to be effective and will sound like the whines of sour-grape losers.

McCain, given his earlier well deserved reputation and stature, is in a strong position to convert a partisan donnybrook into a laudable, bipartisan “Country First” effort. In fact, no one else can come close.

In return for abandoning his incredibly ill conceived tax plans, he could help ensure that all incentives for wealth creation aren’t wiped out by a vengeful Congress. In return for completely abandoning the fundamentalist fringe of the Republican party, he could assist in pulling the Democrats away from their irresponsibly populist fringe, if populist is the right term for it. He could permanently banish Appallin Palin to political oblivion and work on the sensible energy and environmental policies that America and the world need with desperate urgency. He could work to convince his party colleagues that unless America works hard at educating and training tomorrow’s workforce, so they can be more productive and value-effective than those of all other countries, both the relative and absolute declines in the real wages of blue-collar and service workers cannot be arrested. He could even join the president in convincing the world that few Americans are as innately bellicose as Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush. He may even be helpful in convincing the world that American exceptionalism is at best a ridiculous notion, not a defensible doctrine.

There is just so much he could do, if only he were to choose to do so. I strongly suspect that he will find a willing and highly capable collaborator in another losing senator, Hillary Clinton. Imagine Obama, Biden, McCain and Clinton working together in serving the country.

Oh well, a recumbent retiree can dream, can’t he?

Labels: Barak Obama, McCain, US Elections

# posted by Vagyakartha : 2:41 AM