Getting Real

Some things are obvious. Others are saying it, too. When you cut through the crap, push away "he's a terrorist, they hate America," and listen to what Obama says, comparing it to the tone and text of McPalin's campaign, nothing could be more clear: If it's possible to get through these tough times -- and I'm not at all certain it is -- the style and substance of the leadership offered by Barack Obama is exactly what we need, and those of McPalin are exactly what we don't. And that, of course, is why McPalin are trying to change the subject. And change it. And change it. And change it.

Lurch

It's almost funny, were it not so pathetic. Over the weekend, McCain announces he'll be releasing a new economic plan today. Lindsay (I'm as self righteous as Joe Lieberman and even smarmier) Graham was out there on the tubes saying the plan "will be a very comprehensive approach to jump-start the economy, by allowing capital to be formed easier in America by lowering taxes." Well, it's today. Oops.

The operative words, to pick only a sampling of the applicable, are erratic, disarray, incoherent, confused, unbalanced, lost. Which is not to say the campaign is over. I've written about how conservatives think differently from liberals; about that amazing study showing that when presented with facts which disprove a position, they actually increase their belief in that position. Today, McPalin are out with a new ad that even more brazenly hypes the Obama-as-terrorist connection. (For an excellent fact-check, read this.)

So I guess the question is this: will people take note of, and be appropriately distressed by the way, under duress, John McCain is lurching around like a zombie, or will they recede into the ooze of guilt-by-association, distortion, and lies? I'm hopeful; but, past being prologue, I'm a long way from confident.

Update: Gee, after Obama came out with a comprehensive plan today, it looks like McCain changed his mind again. My neck hurts.

Getting To Know You

Sarah Palin, who's been on the national scene for, "like five weeks" (her words), says we really don't know Barack Obama. Whereas that's no more laughable than most any of her other contradictions and non-sequiturs, it's particularly ripe when you think how John McCain lives in a persona created out of whole cloth and furthered by media who like his barbeques. This video, whatever else it may be, is based on personal accounts. As I said in my last post, the public is beginning to have unadorned glimpses of the real John McCain, the one that's been there all along. Pretty it is not. Scary it is.

The Invisible Man

At what point might people look at John McCain and say, okay, we admit it, we blew it, the guy has no business being president? I'm deadly serious. It's not like he's trying to hide it. What I'm talking about is the fact that he's entirely about shooting from the hip. And, of late, lying. After a while, it gets really disturbing. Calmness under fire, careful deliberation? Since when? Sarah Palin? Suspending his campaign? "We are all Georgians?" F-bombs, calling his wife a c*nt?

I have my theories, of course. As an Air Force flight surgeon -- a doctor to pilots -- I saw things when I was in Vietnam. Among them was a very clear pattern: fighter pilots are a breed apart. The same might be said -- IS said -- about surgeons. Drama, danger, boldness, self confidence: characteristics (along with occasional assholery) of both genera. Other than the fact that one group is trying to kill people and the other is trying to save them, there are common elements that lead to common patterns of self-selection. Fighter jocks differ from airlift drivers. Surgeons differ from internists. In the Officers' Club in Danang (it was, appropriately, called the DOOM Club, for Danang Officers' Open Mess), you could tell the fighter boys easily: louder, drinking more, grouped together, wearing their flight suits with fancy kerchiefs. (For the record, I have nothing but admiration for all military pilots: the ones I knew, and flew with in all sorts of planes, were smart, skilled, and dedicated beyond words. I'd trust 'em all with my life. And often did.)

John McCain, it seems, took it all deeply to heart. A party boy, a poor student, he showed a reckless abandon from the start. Had he not been the son and grandson of admirals his career might have ended before it started; but I'd guess it endeared him to his fellow fliers. The archetype of the archetype. Tough guy, fuck-you sort of a guy.

On my way to Vietnam, I, along with all others on flying status in the Air Force, stopped in the Philippines for jungle survival school. In the rain forest for a couple of nights, we were taught "escape and evasion" skills. There were lectures on what was known about POW camps, torture, and torture resistance. (I particularly recall a letter that had been sent home by a POW, slipping through censors the phrase "if he paints the house, Tell Old Richard To Use Real Enamel." (Capitals mine.) There were mock-ups of booby traps and torture devices. It was scary stuff.

It's a failure for a pilot to be shot down, to be captured, to break under the pain of torture. Fighter jocks see themselves as tough guys, invincible; they're cocky. Without really knowing what it's like, I assume it's the ultimate blow to one's view of oneself. (I remember thinking, during those lectures, that I'd not survive it. When flying in Vietnam, we were issued survival vests, which had, among other things, a file in a sleeve for sticking up one's ass, maps, a statement in several languages that our government would reward anyone who helped us, and a .38 pistol, along with a dozen bullets. The fighter jocks added a bandoleer with a couple hundred more rounds. How stupid, I thought: surviving a situation where you'd need two hundred rounds fired from a pistol? Right. I figured if I were in that predicament, I'd need only one.)

John McCain has been fairly honest about his captivity, admitting he cracked, made propaganda films, tried suicide. It's heart-rending. It's understandable, forgivable, even admirable. Is it heroic? Not, I'd say, to him; not in his heart of hearts. Which, I submit, is the problem. And he's spending the rest of his life dealing with it. Anger, vindictiveness, seeing the world in black/white, good/evil terms. Demonizing opponents, seeing those who disagree with him as enemies, as unworthy. In yesterday's debate, he reeked of derision.

This is me, unqualified psychologist, Vietnam vet, doctor to pilots. I admire John McCain for making it through those years; I'm glad it wasn't me. He deserves respect.

As a senator, he's one of a hundred, contained. Unpredictable, flighty, overly dramatic, he'd be a dangerous president. He makes me nervous: to use the medical term, he's one scary dude.

[Update: others weigh in.]

Hot Marbles

I was a surgeon, once. When things got really serious in the operating room, facing a difficult dissection through dangerous territory for example, I got pretty quiet. Generally, I liked talking, joking, teasing in the OR. Music was good, too. But when in that (thankfully) rare situation of impending disaster, it was about focus and silence, except for words necessary to the task at hand. Music was turned off, extraneous conversation ceased at my request.

I've seen some surgeons get all panicky and throw instruments, yell and fire off blame like cannons, indiscriminate and wild. It doesn't help. In fact, it worries the hell out of the entire crew, gets them off their game.

In that context, it's interesting to compare the reactions of John McCain and Barack Obama as the banking industry crumbled before our eyes. It's predictive, I predict, of what their respective presidencies would look like. Couldn't be more different.

First thing out of McPOW's reddening face was the threat to fire Christopher Cox, the head of the SEC. (A couple of times he referred to it as the FEC, the federal elections commmission. Far be it from me to go all Freudian.) Funny, really. For one thing, the president can't fire the head of the SEC. For another, criticizing the man for failing to regulate after passing all the deregulatory legislation is like yelling at your plumber for poor work, after hiding his tools.

Next, while his campaign was accusing Obama of politicizing the crisis, McCain got up and said: "We're heard a lot of words from Sen. Obama over the course of this campaign, but maybe, just this once, he could spare us the lectures and admit to his own poor judgment in contributing to these problems," McCain said. "The crisis on Wall Street started in the Washington culture of lobbying and influence peddling, and he was right square in the middle of it." Politicizing much?

Well, you gotta admire his balls (okay, that's a really scary thought.) In Congress for decades, leading the fight against deregulation, hiring bank lobbyists and those of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae by the bagfull, tainted by the Savings and Loan debacle, Mad Mac manages to suggest that it's Obama (whom he previously criticized for not being in Washington enough) who's at fault. This, from the man whose campaign manager is as deep in it as it gets. That's straight talk only in Wonderland.

So let's recap: John McCain's response to the Wall Street crisis was first to pop off and want to fire someone. Someone whom he can't actually fire, and who had not much to do with the failures; and then to attack Barack Obama in a most pot-calls-pottery-black (no offense) sort of way. Fire, ready, aim. Oh, and he abruptly changed his life-long mantra of deregulation and pretended he'd always been the opposite. Spinning. And spinning.

By contrast, Barack Obama got together with a collection of economic heavyweights, from across the spectrum: a former Fed chair, two or three Treasury secretaries, couple of other guys. He made no from-the-hip pronouncements. He laid out a list of priorities.

I look at it as a window. Before the recent privacy rules, OR doors used to have windows, too. In one, I see a guy screaming at the nurses, stamping his feet, and tossing clamps on the floor. Overheated, losing his marbles. In another, there's a surgeon calling for calm, collecting his thoughts, and concentrating on the job at hand. Who you gonna open your belly to; in whose hands trust your life?

[Update: even that lefty George Will agrees.]