McCain's Layers

This extremely long article has so many layers to talk about, just as McCain has so many layers to talk about. However, the two things I keep coming back to as a reader who can look back over the past nine years and feel regrets for my country, is the “what ifs” and the irony of the 2000 election juxtaposed with the 2008 election.

First, I cannot help wonder how the Iraq War would be different, or whether it would exist at all if McCain, a POW, would have been chosen as the Republican nominee over Bush, who avoided the draft. If McCain would have somehow managed to win the presidential election, certainly this man who experienced the worst of Vietnam first-hand would not have made the same mistakes of that war again. I feel like McCain has just been screwed over by Bush so many times: from negative campaign ads to how Bush’s conduct with Iraq has altered the way that many Americans think about Republicans, or even politics in general.

McCain, was the wrong layer of who he is at the wrong time. In 2008 America was calling for, well, a change. Obama quickly gobbled up this concept with his “Change we can believe in” slogan. And then who was the original master of change, John McCain, suppose to be?

I went to a presidential rally for Obama. I skipped school for Obama. I was in aw of the feeling in the crowd. A rock concert response to a president. The ironic thing is that this was how people my age were treating McCain back in 2000, but it wasn’t enough for McCain to get nominated back then.

I feel bad for McCain. He seems to never be able to catch a break. In the 2000 election he was too different from his own party to beat out Bush as his party’s nominee. He bashed the right wing televised church groups that supported Bush, he refused bundled and soft money, he was open with reporters allowing them to ride with him in his campaign bus. BUT, America was not ready for him. Then in 2008, I honestly thought of him as a bitter old man who seem like he would just be more Bush, although he fought hard to portray himself as not being like Bush. This was the first election that I could vote in and honestly, me along with most of the people my age were uninformed about who the McCain of 2000 was. He was called the “Maverick” to try to regain some of his glory in 2000, but to me, a maverick just sounded like a nice way to old and outdated. For the America of 2008, McCain was not different enough.

Perhaps if more people would have been able to read “Up, Simba” before the republican nominee was chosen in 2000 or bothered to read it before the presidential election of 2008, our history may have been completely different. Better or worse, who is to say? I’m only speculating.