Judging John McCain’s Judgment

One of the most relevant issues in any presidential election is how sound is a president’s judgment? Will the president use common sense to solve problems? Will the president proceed in a decision knowing s/he is right and their evaluation is the best course despite the objections of social, cultural, religious or business groups?

On that, we have John McCain and Hillary Clinton, both of whom decided that what Americans craved was experience and campaigned hard pushing that issue.

Both were wrong in their judgment. The election this year isn’t about experience, it’s about change.

Obama knew it was about change, and it still is.

Now John McCain has seen the light and has abandoned his previous position about experience by naming Sarah Palin, this singularly most under-qualified state governor as his running mate.

John McCain, it seems, is all about "change."

“The Maverick” is back, they say. John McCain made a bold decision for change. He goes against the flow. How is that, I wonder? John McCain wanted Joe Lieberman as his Veep, or he wanted Tom Ridge. But neither of them would be acceptable to the Republican right wing. Lieberman is a moderate and Ridge is pro-choice. Mitt Romney was out because of his religion, but that was bolstered by Obama’s choice of Joe Biden whose son is in the process of deploying to Iraq.

As an aside, I was wondering what Mitt Romney’s sons were doing now that they weren’t doing their patriotic duty to get their father the nomination? It seems to me that they are now free to enlist.

So is John McCain being “The Maverick” on this decision for his vice-president, this crucial first judgment, or is he caving to the extreme evangelical neoconservative right wing, which again has been energized with one of their own on the ballot.

What does this say about John McCain and his judgment?

But let me close with an observation of more recent events. Hurricane Gustav is going to hit the Mississippi Delta at possibly Category 4 force. Lessons learned from Katrina force Bush to eschew the Republican Convention to look more presidential than he did when Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans. He will govern over the storm in Texas instead. You do remember the photo taken just 3 years ago of Bush landing in Phoenix Arizona on Air Force One to present John McCain with a birthday cake? On the day 1800 died in the Gulf Coast region? Well so does John McCain.

In John McCain’s judgment, the best place for he and his new running mate-to-be is hustling and bustling around in the areas about to be hit, getting in the way as people down here are doing all they can to evacuate the population and protect assets.

In John McCain’s judgment, stopping this work to get his face photographed in a hurricane command center is far more important than actually getting that work done.

Have another piece of cake, John.