One More Day and Joe Lieberman Would've Gotten a Wedgie

by Mark Morelli
October 25, 2008

Even if John McCain and Sarah Palin could wave a magic wand and build the Bridge to Nowhere out of marshmallows and pretzel rods, I wouldn't vote for them.

It's nothing personal. I'm a Democrat. I believe in the party platform. Infuriating as it may sometimes be, I love the political process. Some tune in to "Guiding Light" or "American Idol." I watch C-Span.

So when "my story" threw a twist and John McCain chose Sarah Plain over Romney or Pawlenty, I was anxious to see how she would freshen the story line of this long, exhausting campaign.

Barack Obama's 2004 Democratic convention keynote address catapulted his rise. That's amazing enough. Palin's anointing is more meteoric. She didn't campaign for the spot. It was a gift. All she would have to do is descend the grand spiral staircase in Minneapolis and introduce herself to a rapt world.

First she praised John McCain. Then she spoke proudly to her 19-year-old son Track, an Army infantryman who would be headed for Iraq in a week and mentioned a nephew who also enlisted. Next, she quickly alluded to her three daughters, not singling out any. Perhaps there was not enough time. The Palins have three daughters and that covers it. Then she talked about her baby with Down's Syndrome. Because of this she said there would be an advocate in the White House for special needs children. She did not say that a McCain-Palin administration guarantee health care for all special needs children. She did not elaborate at all. Perhaps there was not enough time.

Next, took the time to tell us that her husband is a fisherman, oil fields worker, union member, snow machine racer and an Eskimo, and that her parents worked at her hometown elementary school.

Finally it was time to hear about the new vice presidential candidate the world hardly knew. Within seconds, before sharing with us any of her mayoral or gubernatorial accomplishments, she said, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Yes!!! I thought to myself as the crowd roared with derisive laughter. Finally, a politician tough enough to take on community organizers... knock 'em down a peg, what with their helping unemployed workers find job training and improving neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and public health.

I grew up in a blue collar town smaller than Wasilla. I lived in Youngstown, Ohio for seven years when it's mills shut down. I attended classes with unemployed steel workers trying to start over, many of them led in this direction by community organizers.

This is how the Republicans chose to introduce Sarah Palin to the world. Next she told us that she said, "thanks but no thanks" and rejected the Bridge to Nowhere, and she contended that Obama never authored any meaningful legislation in Illinois or Washington. Neither statement is true. We should be thankful. She didn't make us wait weeks or months, but she let us know within minutes that she's a vicious liar.

Then everyone laughed at her corny "lipstick/pit bull" joke. Don't encourage her, I thought. By ridiculing the Key Club, the new kid was becoming the most popular kid in school!

It didn't stop. Crowds pumped their fists and shouted "U-S-A! U-S-A!" turning patriotism into a tailgate party. Patriotism is, after all, good citizenship, which requires reading up on the issues, voting all the time -- even for school board and neighborhood ward candidates and even better, becoming one -- learning how government works even if it means watching "I'm Just a Bill" on YouTube, raising responsible kids and, for good measure, practicing the Golden Rule even when nobody's watching. After that, if you want to wear a flag pin... well, it's a free country!

Planning a long-term clean energy program that requires study, discipline and the coordination of a major economic policy just isn't as fun as chanting, "Drill, baby, drill!" (even more fun had the convention planners skipped balloons and instead dumped crude oil over the ecstatic Republicans like Nickelodeon slime.).

Halfsquare means you reach a point in life where you look back and see you're not as cool as you used to be.

Or you realize you were never as cool as you thought you were.

With maturity comes the wise hindsight to see that people who lack the imagination and discipline to forge strong relations will go to any destructive lengths to get people to think they are cool... to be accepted.

That's what I saw in Minneapolis, snarky people in the back of a convention-sized study hall ready to follow each other on a bridge to nowhere.

As I write, less than two weeks before Election Day, the Republican base hasn't changed, although the gravity of the financial state of the union has. When interviewed, Palin talks gibberish and her right wing supporters enable her ignorance by defending it, revealing that they put party not country first. When scripted, she shoots venom, and her supporters cheer her on, encouraging her childish cruelty, revealing that they still don't have the timbre to understand serious adult issues, still slacking in the back of study hall with no plans beyond where to hang out after school. And in his desperation to find a strategy that works (ie, approval from the other kids), McCain is hardly any better.

With Wall Street in a free fall it's time that someone please tell Sarah Palin and her smartass friends to go in the other room and heckle infomercials while the grownups talk about serious matters.