I Told You So

As so often happens we write a post that lends itself to an update. Well, last week I wrote the following:

The Obama campaign is driven by being an antidote to the Bush administration which, like it or not and for many different reasons (partly George's own fault, partly through media projection), is a laughing stock not only in NZ, but around the world. Anything but Bush. Mark my words: The Obama camp is going to drive that point hard over the next two months, that McCain will be "four more years of failed Bush policies," and the McCain camp would be wise to do as much as they can to distance themselves from the Bush administration.

OK, so that may not be the most prophetic statement ever made and may be quite obvious to anybody with a pulse who has been paying attention to the campaign with only one eye half-open - but it is nevertheless true. And here is a perfect example of the left doing just as I predicted:

...The point is that Palin, and the circus she's brought to town, are simply a bountiful collection of small lies deliberately designed to distract the country from one big truth: the havoc that George Bush and the Republican Party have wrought, and that John McCain is committed to continuing.

Every second of this campaign not spent talking about the Republican Party's record, and John McCain's role in that record, is a victory for John McCain.

Her critics like to say that Palin hasn't accomplished anything. I disagree: in the space of ten days she's succeeded in distracting the entire country from the horrific Bush record -- and McCain's complicity in it. My friends, that's accomplishment we can believe in.

Just look at the problem John McCain faced. George Bush has a disastrous record, and the country knows it. John McCain -- the current one, not the one who vanished eight years ago -- has no major disagreements with George Bush (and I'm sorry, wanting to fire Donald Rumsfeld a bit sooner doesn't qualify) and wants to continue his incredibly unpopular policies for another four years. The solution? Enter Sarah Palin, a Trojan Moose carrying four more years of disaster.

So there it is: Voting for McCain is four more years of Bush according Arianna Huffington, a very popular and influential blogger on the left. It's all on.

But let me point out a few things. Whatever were the reasons that McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, it wasn't them or the GOP who started sounding any horns about it. They put her out there, and the MEDIA created the firestorm - not the GOP. We can sit around and discuss all day long the idea that this is just what McCain and the GOP hoped for, and that is probably a valid topic for discussion. My view is that the media, like most of the rest of the population, has a short attention span. We have collectively short memories, and the media is no different. Nobdy had heard of Sarah Palin until she was announced as McCain's VP running mate, and the media scrambled for stories to report on. Then they became a dog with a bone: They will chew it for all it's worth, and when the bone is pulp and has lost its flavor, the media will be onto the next bone. Just keep that metaphor in mind.

There were some other points made in Arianna's article that need to be addressed to keep matters in perspective. Huffington continues:

And the plan has worked beautifully. Just look at what's being discussed just 57 days before the election. Is it the highest unemployment rate in five years? The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? The suicide bombing yesterday in Iraq that killed six people and wounded 54 -- in the same market where last month a bomb killed 28 people and wounded 72? That the political reconciliation that was supposedly the point of "the surge" is nowhere near happening? That Iraq's Shiite government is now rounding up the American-backed Sunni leaders of the Awakening? That the reason 8,000 soldiers may be leaving Iraq soon is so more can be deployed to Afghanistan where the Taliban is steadily retaking the country?

First she cites the "highest unemployment rate in five years" which is true, but it's only slightly higher than where it had been hovering until now; a rate of umemployment equal to that which existed during the Clinton administration when that was considered OK. A pending recession in the balance, the Fannie/Freddie bailout, and the slumping housing market is not solely germaine to the United States. This is global. Here in New Zealand we're already in recession, and the housing market has declined severely. Property values are low; nobody in their right mind is selling; it's a buyer's market. In a country of only 4.1 million people 39 finance companies have gone belly-up since May 2006, leaving many investors with virtually nothing. The whole world is feeling the pinch.

Regarding the Iraq situation, all I can say is that war and conflict is fluid; the dynamics change every day, sometimes every hour. It's not a scripted one hour TV drama. And whatever happens overseas, the war will ALWAYS be a drum the left can beat like a life insurance policy that guarantees them a certain return on the investement.

The funny thing is that most people who have an interest, I believe, already have their minds made up regarding for whom they will vote. All this back-and-forth slinging of mud by sycophants on both sides is just media fodder. It's nothing more than a really bad bloody soap opera, reminding me of this line from Shakespeare's "Macbeth":

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Or the lyrics to the song, "Limelight", from drummer/lyricist, Neil Peart (a big Ayn Rand fan, btw), of Rush, paraphrasing Shakespeare in the last stanza:

Living on a lighted stage
Approaches the unreal
For those who think and feel
In touch with some reality
Beyond the gilded cage.

Cast in this unlikely role,
Ill-equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact.

Living in the limelight
The universal dream
For those who wish to seem

Those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation
Get on with the fascination
The real relation
The underlying theme.

Living in a fisheye lens
Caught in the camera eye
I have no heart to lie
I cant pretend a stranger
Is a long-awaited friend.

All the worlds indeed a stage
And we are merely players
Performers and portrayers
Each another's audience
Outside the gilded cage

Hat-tip: Oldcatman for the link to the Huffington Post article.