About Last Night: The Nashville Townhall

2008-10-08
By Monroe Anderson

So I’m looking at my savaged, decimated stock portfolio, fearing that I might have to come out of my early semi-retirement to find a job at the very moment when they’re being out-sourced or disappearing before my very eyes, as I hear the McCain campaign tell us that Barack Obama once hung out with Bill Ayers and worshiped with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Uh huh. That and $65 will fill up the gas tank in my seven-year old Honda Accord. Rather than old, unrelated news, I want to hear specific, concrete plans on how my financial ship will be steered back on course to Treasure Island. 

I know Obama has a clue. I doubt that John McCain does. That’s why I couldn’t wait to watch the second round of the presidential debates. I wanted to see to if McCain was man enough to step to Obama with some in-your-face mud slinging or would he wimp out and pretend that he cared more about Main Street than Wall Street. I saw enough at the town hall meeting.
For one shining moment, the Maverick showed up in Nashville. Right off the bat, he announced that as president he’d have his secretary of state “buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America” and have the banks renegotiate their jacked up rates.
   
Once he got that off his chest, McCain rested on the tattered and tired conservative clichés he’s been spouting ever since he steered the Straight Talk Express off the information highway to bounce along the bumpy back roads in Bush Country.
 McCain insisted on keeping taxes low, particularly for the fat cats. McCain invoked the right-wing idol, Ronald Reagan’s name--as if that were some sort of white magic that would get us out of the mess eight years of W. misrule has put us in. McCain got stuck on spieling about how he supported the Surge and Obama had not. The Arizona senator also threw out the flag-waving slogans his peeps love to hear but refuse to give any serious thought.


Never mind that the stock market has plunged 5,000 points this year -- “Our best days are ahead of us.” And, never mind that we invaded Iraq—which had no Weapons of Mass Destruction and nothing to do with 9/11—leaving tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens dead and the nation in ruin --  “America is the greatest force for good in the history of the World.”
      
      
And, my friends, McCain knows how to nail Osama bin Laden, lead us back to the promised land of good and plenty, win the occupation in Iraq and the Bush-botched war in Afghanistan—he’s just keeping it a secret until he’s sworn in as POTUS.
 The Republican candidate also knows what to do about making sure Americans have health coverage. Unfortunately for both us and him, his explanation of his insurance plan sounded like Palin's explanation of her readiness to move into the Oval Office—confused, bemused, befuddled, muddled.
 Meanwhile, Obama spoke to middle class frustration and anger with plain talk while sounding and looking presidential, which bottom-lined in “that one”--as McCain chose to condescendingly call him--winning the debate hands down.


But tomorrow is another day for the right to play. With the polls giving Obama the win in both presidential debates and an ever-increasing lead in the national opinion polls, can we count on the McCain campaign to ignore our financial pain and return to the politics of personal destruction, pumped out by the right-wing fear and smear machine?
 You betcha!

Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Check out his blog at monroeanderson.typepad.com