Why the McCain house gaffe matters

President-elect McCain’s inability to recall how many houses he owns fits into a larger and more troubling pattern. The problem is not just that he is an out-of-touch rich guy.

This is the candidate who repeatedly confused Shiite and Sunni — all the while trumpeting his expertise on the Middle East. At one point, his sock puppet Joe Lieberman had to whisper the facts in his ear. He couldn’t tell Sudan from Somalia. He kept talking about a nation that hasn’t existed for years. Iraq and Pakistan share a border, the senator wrongly said, and the Sunni awakening happened ‘after’ the surge (edited out by CBS). He said he didn’t know much about economics, then denied saying such a thing. He spoke of a withdrawal timetable one day, then denied saying it later. He volunteered Cindy for a topless contest. Then there was the stupendous dead space and mumbling when he was questioned about claiming Obama was playing the race card.  He claimed he walked through Baghdad without body armor or protection, etc., etc. Most of this has been captured on tape.

What’s going on? Neither obvious answer is comforting. He’s either going senile as he nears 72, or he’s lying and unprepared on critical issues without realizing how easily this can be caught in a YouTube era. (Whether the duhs and ignos — those ‘undecided voters’ and angry Clintonites — will care, is another, depressing matter). Either one of these answers should disqualify  him for the White House, particularly because so many of his misstatements, confusions and subsequent lies come about issues where he claims superior experience and judgment.

But next consider all his flip flops, over torture, warrantless wiretapping, tax cuts, Social Security, abortion rights, engaging with Hamas, nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, offshore drilling, etc. Once the presumptive nominee, he said Social Security was "an absolute disgrace.’ His chief economic adviser and likely Treasury secretary called Americans a ‘nation of whiners’ and said the recession was in our heads. This from a rich man who helped deregulate banking, profited from it, then profited again from the current deregulated banking crisis. Soon after McCain reversed course to support drilling, oil industry contributions poured in.

The above is not a disjointed laundry list. When we combine it with McCain’s obvious mental fatigue, the really disturbing picture comes clear.

I don’t know if McCain was ever a real ‘maverick’ or not. From this Arizonan’s perspective, I always found it too convenient how marrying into the Hensley fortune and finding a ‘home’ in a reliably conservative state meshed with McCain’s intense political ambition. On the ground in Arizona, he was rarely more than one more tedious ideologue, albeit a hot tempered one, and less hard working or engaged than his conservative colleague Jon Kyl. In any event, after his 2000 drubbing by the Rove machine, the maverick died.

What appears to be happening now is that McCain is being pushed from one position to another, one event and appearance to another, by the Rovian ops, neo-con war mongers, lobbyists (including one for Georgia) and corporate powers that really control the Republican Party. They have no intention of abandoning the power they have amassed since 1981, through deregulation, tax cuts, trade deals, no antitrust enforcement, anti-labor laws and the casino on Wall Street. Nor will they part with their militarized national security state and ‘unitary executive.’ Any attempt to rebuild the middle class, provide health insurance and job security, address global warming, diversify our energy and transportation systems, or recalibrate our overstretched military commitments is a non-starter with them.

So they’re using this elderly man as their wind-up toy, hoping the POW-war hero-tough (white) guy approach will save their power. Any of us might seem confused in such circumstances, especially if we had allowed ambition to grind away the safety on our moral governor.

‘Where’s the rest of me?’ Ronald Reagan famously shouted in King’s Row. What seems to be left of McCain is his temper and his fighter jock belligerence. Thus, he couldn’t wait to issue threats to Moscow that seemed one step away from the temperament of Gen. Curtis LeMay — while Obama and the Bush administration were trying to be more sensibly measured. Thank God LeMay, in the Cuban Missile Crisis, was restrained by a President (JFK) who vowed not to trust his generals again. Under Bush, it was the generals who were rightly prudent while the neo-cons played the LeMay role.

What might we have to anticipate if enough idiots vote McCain into the White House in November?