A friend of mine asked me today about McCain since he knew I lived in Arizona.
My friend commented, "I used to think he was OK, but now he seems kind of crazy.".
I talked about the fact that I had run into him before in our local nursery while his wife was buying some plants, and that he had been very approachable, and very knowledgeable about the issues, and that he always knew both sides of the issue, and could show why he was on such and such a side of the issue, based on certain basic principles of his. That you get the feeling that McCain has certain core values, and that he makes decisions based on that. But also that he can change is mind as facts change.
Then I asked him, "Ok, so why does he seem crazy?"
"Well," he said, "it seems like he used to always complain about negative campaigning, and now it seems like he's been doing more of it lately. It's like there are two McCains."
"Ah," I said, "Well, that's absolutely true. But I blame not McCain, but both the media and Obama for that. McCain early on offered to do town meeting after town meeting with Obama. Obama turned him down. So now McCain has to campaign, and frankly, the media wants to cover the horse race. From the media's point of view, the ideal presidential campaign looks more like the World Wrestling Federation then anything else. So if McCain wants to get any media attention, he has to say negative things about Obama. It's how the system works. He hates it, he tried to change the rules, but he failed, in part because the other candidate wouldn't go along. Meanwhile, he does mostly town meetings with his campaigns. Sometimes, at those meetings, people stump him because they can talk about anything. Like I saw him get stumped when someone asked him while Medicaid pays Viagra, but not birth control pills. But now he's the one that brings that up."
"I can totally see how he's forced into that by the media," he said.
You know, as citizens, we get the campaigns we deserve. The way the Presidential campaigns should really work is that rather then have the candidates blow millions on these stupid 30-second ads that don't tell you anything, every other Saturday, a candidate should get 1 hour of free TV time to make their pitch. That Sunday, the other candidate should get a half hour to rebut the candidate. Then they should swap. Once/month, there should be a town hall meeting for at least 2 hours.
That's what we should be doing. Instead, we get this.
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