Bad Rhetoric

I’ve lost all hope for John McCain. Seven years ago he was a potentially bright spot in a very dim presidential campaign, but in the interim I’ve watched him become an opportunistic Bush surrogate. He’s hiring the Swift Boat people and the sharks that gutted him in North Carolina for Bush in 2000 for his 2008 campaign… a good time for it, I suppose, while no one but junkies like myself and the papers are paying any attention. In true Bush form, he’s adding advisors that might elect him, but will definitely overwhelm him. I suppose his lesson learned from 2000 was ‘be more like George W. Bush’.

I hope McCain is trying a strategy similar to how Lincoln formed his Cabinets – freely appointing to high positions his potential rivals and people who helped him get elected, where 1) he could keep an eye on them 2) limit how they could attack him 3) force them to plot against each other to no great effect, and 4) always know the wrong course of action because they would advise it. Now historians think Lincoln wasn’t that great at picking generals, but c’mon – his first choice was Lee.