Thursday, April 3, 2008
Politics and Addiction
The political news is depressing and addictive. The candidates all seemed okay until more came out. Hillary now looks tired and devious; her coronation will not come as she clearly expected.
Obama appears an empty suit; a cynical careerist who refused to acknowledge his true motives in joining a church with a toxic pastor, derived from a cynical careerist calculation (as he did admit in his book) for street cred; instead of a mea culpa, Obama arrogated to himself the role of lecturer, instructing the groundlings (that's us) on race. It was an opportunity missed — he could have admitted his ambition and mistake in judgment — it would have been a stirring instantiation of his motto of change you can believe in — an honest, self-aware politician.
McCain, according to a Fresh Air interview today with an expert on the mortgage crisis, has as his economic adviser a politician who introduced the bill that allowed the crisis to exfoliate. The bill introduced by McCain's adviser essentially removed oversight of the banks and insurance companies which then indulged themselves in the cloaked betting that resulted in the mortgage crisis. And McCain is clearly not interested in economic issues, except in the sense of letting things fall where they may.
Great.