George W. Bush has shamed many Americans with his incoherent and anti-intellectual approach to the presidency. Now here comes John McCain.\
In 1854, an anti-immigrant, fiercely Protestant political party called the Know Nothings fielded one losing presidential candidate before many of their adherents folded into the newly forming Republican Party. Could it be that the Know Nothings are back, with John McCain at the top of their ticket?
John McCain doesn't know where he stands or how he's voted on birth control issues. He doesn't know that Czechoslovakia has been two separate countries since 1993. He doesn't know much about economics. But somehow he knows he's the best choice for president.
So in 2008 it comes down to choosing between the former president of the Harvard Law Review, who has a clearly powerful intellect and ability to learn quickly, or the guy who doesn't really understand the economy after decades of voting on legislation that deals with it, and whose knowledge base will likely deteriorate while in office.
Doctors insisted that President Reagan, despite serious debate, had not experienced early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease in the White House. The New York Times wrote:
Mr. Reagan had been portrayed by many pundits and political opponents as absent-minded, inattentive, incurious, even lazy. And his Presidency was marked by a succession of very public mental stumbles -- most notably his dismal performance in the first debate of the 1984 campaign, and his confused and forgetful accounting of his role in the Iran-Contra affair ...
If the doctors were right, then forgetting his role in a major foreign policy operation was just typical memory loss for a man in his seventies. If that's typical -- and McCain's behavior suggests it might be -- should we really be willing to accept it?
When we go to the polls in November, remember what eight years of choosing the guy we wanted to have a beer with over the guy we resented for being smarter than us has gotten us.
The problem with age-related memory loss is as nothing compared to the short memory of most Americans. Except maybe in cases like, "Bomb Iran? But, Your Presidentship Sir, we did that yesterday...."
The Repuglican'ts have kind of a selective memory problem at the best of times. They remember things as happening the way they were supposed to happen when they dreamt 'em up, as opposed to the usual disastrous way their schemes turn out. Hey, they'd remember it forever if a lobbyist's check bounced.
