Friction and Fiction

It is my intention to be as fair as possible when writing about the elections. I will try to call out anyone who appears to be immersing their constituency in the bowels of fiction instead of embracing the truth. But recently I’ve realized that most of my posts have been critical of Democrats.

I don’t mean to say that the Republican candidate has no flaws, but as he is racking up endorsements and funds, the Democratic duo are locked in a contest of exposition, each trying to out-politique the other. And so the gloves have come off on the Democratic side, while John McCain is waiting in the wings to pounce when finally either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton bows out.

This wait-and-strike policy is applicable in many different situations, but the easiest way for me to explain it is using video games as an example, specifically first person shooters. Great, you’re thinking, this eclectic fusion of video games and politics is just too nonsensical. Normally I would agree, but this is the simplest way to explain McCain’s current strategy.

Your computer-generated character is sneaking down a long, grainy corridor. You stop at a T junction at the end of the hall and peer around the left corner. Five aliens are waiting, guns drawn. Peeking around the right corner, you see five other aliens. You weigh your options. You could try to use the corner for cover and pick them off as best as you can; or you can charge, guns blazing, hoping to take down all ten extra terrestrials before they can get you. Neither option is promising. But wait, out of nowhere, the two droves of aliens begin shooting at each other, still unaware of your presence. Suddenly your choice is clear: wait until they are done fighting before you attack. At worst, you will only have five aliens to deal with, but that’s assuming one side comes out totally unscathed. More likely, you will only have to clear one or two, because even the winning side of the first fight will have sustained significant damage against an evenly matched opponent. You have now gone from having to face ten aliens to having to face two, without even firing a shot — an amazingly efficient use of your resources — and meanwhile, you have remained safe from the crossfire.

Right now, John McCain is crouching in that T junction, waiting smugly as his two opponents verbally, politically, and rhetorically destroy each other. Either Obama or Clinton will eventually win, but by that point, they will be terribly weakened, not in the sense of having lost strength per say, but in the sense that they have expended resources, and more importantly, used up their relatively untainted political clout. Whoever ends up battling McCain will have quite a bit of baggage by the relative finality of the Democratic Convention.

I use this example to highlight McCain’s strategy, as well as to explain my heavy critique of the Democrats. I have called both Clinton and Obama out on some of their empty promises simply because they are vocalizing them loudly. In every debate, rally, or primary night victory speech, we hear the same things. McCain, however, has been unusually silent. Aside from the lack of Republican debates, McCain no longer has any viable opponent by a long shot for the Republican nomination, so the victory speeches are not as energizing or exciting or, sometimes, existent. It’s not that McCain has stopped campaigning; it’s that he is doing so more carefully simply because he can afford to do so.

In addition, we have the media to partially blame for this, myself included, as I have also been writing quite a bit more about Democrats lately. And so we see an emerging vicious cycle: the more exciting a race is, the more coverage it gets, the more scrutiny it gets, the more exciting it becomes. Right now, the media and news outlets are McCain’s biggest inadvertent ally in the fight against the Democrats. They are allowing him to stay out of the crossfire and remain safely tucked away, waiting to strike when the moment is right.

Yesterday I checked, just for good measure, the CNN political ticker page. Amazingly, Obama and Clinton are each mentioned 62 times on the front ticker page. That looks like pretty balanced reporting to me, until you consider that McCain is mentioned only seven times. Seven. He is almost entirely under the radar, and enjoying every minute of it.

And so, with this intrinsic bias in mind, I want to use this post to call the senator from Arizona out on a few things that could provide the Democratic nominee with footholds up the side of Mount McCain.

One of the most obvious mistakes, and I use the term “obvious” relatively given what we’ve said so far, is that McCain has continued speaking in abstractions when laying out his potential policies. This is a criticism that I have more often levelled at Senator Obama, but to be fair, Obama’s plans (while more self-contradictory at parts and not very inclusive and assimilating of other ideas, despite the promise of uniting the county) are much more well articulated in details and specifics. And Clinton has accused Obama of offering only words and no substantive hope. No matter who the Democratic nominee is, McCain needs to beef up his policies with actual plans, or his experience and political know-how will be overrun by the details, flawed though they may be, offered by the Democratic candidate.

On international trade, the McCain campaign says that “the U.S. should engage in multilateral, regional and bilateral efforts to reduce barriers to trade, level the global playing field and build effective enforcement of global trading rules.” I think almost all Republicans would agree with this. I think most Democrats would agree as well. I agree with it. Most sensible people I know would agree with it.

And that’s the problem. McCain maintains the illusion of bipartisanship by using abstract statements that are pretty much invulnerable. But they don’t provide any real solutions. If McCain could provide a specific policy to enact with China, a plan to keep jobs in America while still at the same time allowing for the adherence to the principles of free trade with countries who are economically stable enough, or even just an outline of the specific trade plans he will explore while in office, I would feel much more comfortable.

McCain’s health care plan is quite a bit more detailed, but then it would have to be, what with Obama and Clinton reciting their entire plans during each Democratic debate. However, again, there seem to be a lot of good ideas without any set means of achieving them. McCain talks about lifting the restrictions that insurance companies have imposed on who may treat patients and lifting the restrictions the government has imposed on who may insure patients. If we’re to keep health care privatized, then this sounds like a good means of opening the market while at the same time making quality health care more accessible. But how does he plan to get there? Will he, John McCain, personally take on the insurance companies and all their lobbyists? Probably not, at least not successfully.

On the environment and energy policy, McCain again makes sense, but not enough sense. We can actually use one of Hillary Clinton’s phrases (aimed at Obama with regard to health care) and apply it to McCain here. If you don’t start out with a specific plan in mind and a realistic way of getting there, then you “will be nibbled to death,” by lobbyists and partisan legislators. I feel almost conciliatory in saying it, but in this case, Clinton is absolutely correct.

But John McCain has been around Washington long enough to know the political realities of the system better even than Clinton. So why would he be so unspecific as to how he plans to achieve his goals? It is possible that this has something to do with diverting the limelight elsewhere. In order to remain under the radar, he can’t make any controversial statements. Not yet, at least. We’ll see whether McCain finally gets down to details when he joins in the political firefight.

While some of McCain’s ideas are a little vague, others just don’t make sense. His immigration policy, at least as outlined on his campaign’s website, is merely a laundry list of considerations. When I read it, I felt as if I was looking through an incomplete guide on how to formulate one’s own immigration policy. It does not give any feasible way of dealing with the current problem. It doesn’t even acknowledge that there are any illegal immigrants (let alone millions) already inside this country.

His immigration plan is 386 words long. My college entrance essays were longer than that, and I was only trying to get into a school. John McCain is trying to get into the oval office. Not only that, but the plan begins with a hook meant to draw in the reader. “Immigration is one of those challenging issues that touch on many aspects of American life.” Oh, no. One of those. Allow me to snap my fingers, tilt my head, sigh, and express my mild frustration.

McCain says, “If we have learned anything from the recent immigration debate, it is that Americans have little trust that their government will honor a pledge to do the things necessary to make the border secure.” First of all, I hope we’ve learned more than one thing from this debate. Second, if we have learned only one thing, I would hope that it would be a more substantive lesson than that. But, please, no one panic, because John McCain follows up this statement with, “As president, I will secure the border.” Oh good. I was befuddled for a moment by your vagueness, but now I see that everything will be fine.

Sarcasm aside, there isn’t even a link for education under the list of issues on the McCain website. I can tell you that his support of “No Child Left Behind” carries with it the condition of minor revisions. We can guess, probably fairly accurately, at what these revisions would be, but as someone trying to earn our trust and support in winning the presidency, wouldn’t McCain be better off just coming out and telling us?

The problem with waiting until the aliens massacre each other, which is not really accounted for in video games, is twofold. First, the remaining aliens will likely be the strongest simply because they were the ones to survive the initial battle. Second, the remaining aliens will be battle-hardened, and if they are savvy enough to find your weaknesses, then they will know exactly how to exploit them. Obama and Clinton have put behind them quite a bit of “live ammo” training and actual political combat with one another. They and their respective campaigns have developed a more intuitive political sense. Meanwhile, McCain has been at the shooting range, honing his skills. But he has never had to put up a political fight quite like his now impending challenge, and whoever the Democratic nominee is will make Mitt Romney look like easy pickings.