McCain't

I'm a little worried.

It looks like the GOP may have found its great white hope. It is telling that the first two Republican governors to endorse John McCain were California's' Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger and Florida's Charlie Christ, the two party "centrists" that put the greatest distance between themselves and the Bush mob early on. Mark my words, everything that comes out of the mouths of the remaining Republican candidates will continue to evoke the nostalgia of the ultimate anti-Bush, the Alzheimer's Presidency of Ronald Reagan, the man who christened the corporatist ship-of-state, who with his avuncular, B-movie actor's charm, convinced a sizable share of America that government was the problem, not the solution (and never asking what that made him by association) while giving the CIA leave to smuggle and sell crack to fund the Contras. Yes, we can be entertained at least until "super" Tuesday (Super Bowl, super rich, super size me - what is it with us friggin' Americanos?) by McCain, Romney and Huckabee all trying to out-Reagan each other, while Ron Paul does his strange, Libertarian version of Dennis Kucinich. My guess is the nomination is McCain's to lose.

Whatever lingering respect I had for John McCain was lost when I watched him climb in George W. Bush's lap after being eviscerated by the Rovian slime machine during the 2000 primary season. It was at that point, in his hunger to one day occupy the Oval Office, that McCain stopped being his own man.

So why I am worried? Because I don't think Hillary Clinton can defeat John McCain. If Clinton is crowned as the candidate of the Democratic party, I fear that many young people, for whom Barak Obama represents their future, will sit this one out. I fear that some progressives, who see a palpable difference between Barak and Hilary, but not necessarily between her and McCain, may too. And the independents, who loathe the Clintons almost as much as their Republican half-siblings, will rationalize their votes for McCain. And meanwhile, the GOP war machine, aided and abetted by Rupert Murdoch, engineered by Karl Rove, will do what they do best. They may not even have to steal this one.

And what would a McCain presidency portend for the nation? Less jobs. More wars. The real McCain?