Hat vs. Hat

Some unintentional candor, revealing the speaker's belief in an irreconcilable, binary opposition:

"I want to thank my fellow Republicans as we take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats and say, America we are with you and we are going to care about these people in their time of need."

-- Sen. John McCain, Republican presidential candidate, on plans to downscale the Republican National Convention as Hurricane Gustav approaches the Gulf Coast.

A variation of this also appears on a splash page at McCain's Web site:

"We will act as Americans and not as Republicans because America needs us now."

Two different hats. One of them, McCain says, is appropriate for caring "about people in their time of need." The other, McCain says, must be removed in order to do what America needs.

Two separate hats. And, McCain insists, they can't be worn at the same time.

Actually, that explains a lot.

To his credit McCain has, with only a little self-congratulatory ostentation,* replaced his Web site's usual donation page with links to the American Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity and other charities that will be helping the victims of Hurricane Gustav. That's a Good Thing and McCain deserves unqualified praise for doing that (as does his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, who has done the same thing).

But I'm struck by the duality and opposition revealed in McCain's hat metaphor.

Hat one or hat two. To put either on one must remove the other. His instinct was that he could respond to Hurricane Gustav either as a Republican or else as an American, but that he could not do both. The "American hat" response, McCain says, is "to care about these people in their time of need." And to his credit, McCain has chosen that American hat response instead of its opposite, but how strange that he would suggest or admit that the "Republican hat" response would be its opposite.

Or maybe John McCain was just remembering which hat he was wearing when Hurricane Katrina made landfall.

But hold that thought.

Earlier yesterday, on Fox News Sunday, McCain did another Good Thing. Or at least he said another Good Thing. He said this:

"Waterboarding to me is torture, okay? And waterboarding was advocated by the administration, and according to a published report, was used," McCain said. "I obviously don't want to torture any prisoners."

Apart from a bit of subjective hedging, that's a forcefully blunt condemnation of torture and a refreshing rejection of the Bush administration's (and Fox News') use of Orwellian euphemisms such as "harsh interrogation techniques." He calls torture "torture," and he stands against it.

McCain's opposition to torture was one area in which he previously had my respect. He chose to toss away that respect by reversing himself, supporting President Bush's veto of a measure to ban waterboarding by the CIA.

That was back in February, when McCain was still losing to Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee in Republican primaries. To beat them, he realized, he would need to put on his "Republican hat," and go along with the Bush administration's advocacy of waterboarding. McCain was willing to do that, even though, in his eyes, that required him to take off his "American hat," to set aside his convictions, and to endorse Bush's waterboarding policy.

It seems to me that McCain found that choice distasteful. The choice itself -- the fact that he would be forced to choose -- he found distasteful. But even more distasteful, I think, was the realization that he was willing to make it. That may have been, for McCain, the worst such occasion in which his ambition led him to reverse himself in pursuit of his party's nomination. But it was far from the only such occasion. One result, I think, is that this is how McCain has come to view his affiliation with his party -- as a kind of "hat" that one must sometimes wear instead of the "American hat."

This exchanging of hats carries echoes of an earlier exchange -- the one that launched, and perhaps shaped, McCain's political career. McCain recently spoke of that exchange as "my greatest moral failure." Another choice on the side of ambition and another choice he views, perhaps, with distaste.

Distaste, but not regret. He's not comfortable with those choices, but without them he wouldn't be where he is today and he very much wants to be where he is today. So John McCain, I think, resents the Republican hat. But he'll still put it on when he has to if he thinks it'll help him get where he wants to be.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* The ostentatious self-congratulation has been delegated to McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis, who clumsily fails to realize that one can't claim credit for not politicizing a potential tragedy by jumping up and down and shouting "Look at me! Look at me! See how I'm not politicizing the tragedy? Aren't I noble? Tell all your friends about how I'm not seeking credit at all, just selflessly doing the right thing!"

Comments

[spinetingler]

Interesting to see if any of them have the same response should Hannah (and/or her sisters) contiinue towards us here in the Carolinas.

[smgt]

Fred, I love you.

But seriously, it is a fascinating thing to say. It's almost platonic. You can either be an instantiation of Republicaniam or Americanism, but not both at once.

And this gets at my biggest problem with McCain. Most Republicans, they're just monsters. They are slaves to their own greed and prejudices. But McCain isn't like that. He is actually a good man. He thinks for himself.

Until, that is, his party yanks his leash back in. And then he turns back into his parties dog. And it hurts me, because I believe that if McCain wasn't on that leash, he could probably be a great man.

[smgt]

Hey spinetingler, good to see another Tar Heel Fred fan

[Drake Pope]

>i>Most Republicans, they're just monsters. They are slaves to their own greed and prejudices

Whoa, that's a pretty sweeping generalization. I disagree with the Republicans on almost every issue, but that's still a far cry from that to being "monsters".

He chose to toss away that respect by reversing himself, supporting President Bush's veto of a measure to ban waterboarding by the CIA.

I wonder why he did that. Wasn't he beating more orthodox candidates like Mitt Romney?

[smgt]

Ok, ok, I apologize. I was being too hyperbolic. I shall replace "most with "many," "Republicans" with "Republican politicians," and "monsters" with "dogs"

That work better?

[chris]

smgt: Don't fool yourself. He's on that leash because he wants to be. He could have stayed in the Senate - or not gone into politics at all and been a respected retired veteran.

McCain *chose* ambition and greed, and pandering to prejudice. They weren't forced upon him.

[not_scottbot]

No, no - ambition, greed, and pandering chose McCain. Real mavericks just wait for opportunity to come knocking to violate whatever principles they espouse in public.

For example, in all the reporting I have read, Keating called McCain, not the other way round. Of course, Keating did happen to be a constituent. (Note - this is edited for brevity, but really, the venality shines through anyways)
'As federal auditors examined Lincoln, Keating was not content to wait and hope for the best. He had spread a lot of money around Washington, and it was time to call in his chits.

One of his first stops was Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz.

The state's senior senator was one of Keating's most loyal friends in Congress, and for good reason.... At one point, DeConcini even pushed Keating for ambassador to the Bahamas, where Keating owned a luxurious vacation home.

Now Keating had a job for DeConcini. He wanted him to organize a meeting with regulators to deliver a message: Get off Lincoln's back. Eventually, DeConcini would set up a meeting with five senators and the regulators. One of them was McCain.

McCain already knew Keating well. His ties to the home builder dated to 1981, when the two men met at a Navy League dinner where McCain spoke.

After the speech, Keating walked up to McCain and told him that he, too, was a Navy flier and that he greatly respected McCain's war record. He met McCain's wife and family. The two men became friends.

Charlie Keating always took care of his friends, especially those in politics. McCain was no exception.

In 1982, during McCain's first run for the House, Keating held a fund-raiser for him, collecting more than $11,000 from 40 employees of American Continental Corp....

In 1983, as McCain contemplated his House re-election, Keating hosted a $1,000-a-plate dinner for him, even though McCain had no serious competition. When McCain pushed for the Senate in 1986, Keating was there with more than $50,000.

By 1987, McCain had received about $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.

McCain also had carried a little water for Keating in Washington. While in the House, McCain, along with a majority of representatives, co-sponsored a resolution to delay new regulations designed to curb risky investments by thrifts such as Lincoln.

Reluctant participant
Despite his history with Keating, McCain was hesitant about intervening. At that point, he had been in the Senate only three months. DeConcini wanted McCain to fly to San Francisco with him and talk to the regulators. McCain refused.'
http://www.azcentral.com/news/specials/mccain/articles/0301mccainbio-chapter7.html

Only after being called a 'wimp' did McCain finally do the wrong thing. What a maverick, what a man of integrity.

Wimp. Wimp. Wimp.

But remember - McCain didn't call first.

[Doctor Science]

It's kind of stunning how he just comes out and says that "we are going to care about these people in their time of need" requires taking off the Republican Hat. Especially after Obama's "we're all in this together" speech the other night.

[Consumer Unit 5012]

So, McCain thinks "Compassionate Conservative" really IS an oxymoron, then?

[JayH]

Fred, I generally agree with most of the stuff you say in this blog, but I think in this case you're reading something into McCain's statement that isn't there.

If I were to say, "when I get in the car at 5:30p I officially take off my work hat and put on my husband hat," that wouldn't mean that my work and home life are contradictory, or even mutually exclusive. It wouldn't even mean that I wouldn't rush home at 11a if, for instance, I found out my wife's water had broken. It just means, "Right now, I'm focusing on my job."

Now, having disagreed with you on that point, I will also say that I think your perceptions of McCain's internal conflict -- being his own man vs gaining party support -- are probably on the money.

[Les]

Two different hats. One of them, McCain says, is appropriate for caring "about people in their time of need." The other, McCain says, must be removed in order to do what America needs.

I think that interpretation is rather forced. Right now McCain is in a campaign running for the US Presidency as a Republican. The hat metaphor is intended, as I read it, to say that he's momentarily setting that aside to enlist support for people in their "time of need," putting aside differences in the interest of facing a possible calamity, etc. That's all.

[Dash]

smgt: I was being too hyperbolic. I shall replace "most with "many," "Republicans" with "Republican politicians," and "monsters" with "dogs"

What have you got against dogs?

[Dash]

Les: I think that interpretation is rather forced. Right now McCain is in a campaign running for the US Presidency as a Republican. The hat metaphor is intended, as I read it, to say that he's momentarily setting that aside to enlist support for people in their "time of need," putting aside differences in the interest of facing a possible calamity, etc. That's all.

That might be all he meant, but I think Fred's point is well taken: there's a definite rhetorical misstep here. Remember that the Republicans have for some years been making "Republican" equivalent to "American." For McCain to make a statement rhetorically separating the two was, IMO, either an error or a very strange moment of honesty. (You're not supposed to have moments of honesty when you're a politician.) To take JayH's example, it's not like having the spouse who works outside the home say, "at 5:30, I take off my work hat and put on my wife/husband hat." It's like having June Cleaver, who would define her "job" as "being a wife," say, "when I finish cooking dinner, I take off my work hat and put on my wife hat."

[McDuff]

Do you think that the hat marked "Democrat" is different? Not to pull a false equivalence, but the difference between the parties seems to be more along the "competence" scale than the "genuinely cares about the poor folks" scale.

[Spalanzani]

McDuff: "Do you think that the hat marked "Democrat" is different?"

I think the whole idea is that there shouldn't be a hat marked "Republican" (or "Democrat"/"Green"/"Libertarian"/"Buffy fan") and another, seperate hat marked "American" that one cannot wear simultanously with the "Republican" hat.

[Fred Davis]

I don't know if there's any real problem with holding a distinction between what's good for the party and what's good for the country - part of the problem with Bush's regime has been that the republicans have been presenting anything that furthers the goals of the republicans, be it abuse of the judiciary system, legalised torture or draconian immigration policies, as "good" for the country in a worringly paternalist if not downright soviet fashion.

Of course from the stand point of rhetoric it's a bit too "honest" really - the american political system does require a certain suspension of disbelief wrt the upperclass beauracracy of capitol hill that vets and tries to make sure no presidential candidate in anyway harms the institutions that have become entrenched around government.

This is probably the Bush 1 style Real McCain peeking through rather than the Bush 2 flavor Presidential McCaindidate™ he's been trying desperately to present himself as for hte rest of his campaign.

It's not like Unicorns are flying out of his butt or anything, but it's also not an entirely stupid thing to say, almost courageous even, given that he's got enough opponents in the republican party as it is with out going against The Majority Party's official Meta-memes like this.

[hapax]

I think the whole idea is that there shouldn't be a hat marked "Republican" (or "Democrat"/"Green"/"Libertarian"/"Buffy fan") and another, seperate hat marked "American" that one cannot wear simultanously with the "Republican" hat.

Personally, I wear a hat marked "American" with a Greenish -Blue "Democrat" band and a large "Buffy fan" plume. (snip detailed explanation of other decorations and underlying construction materials)

But it's an invisible hat, most useful when imprisoned naked in a prison camp (electronic peanut butter cookies to the first to spot the reference...)

[Doctor Science]

hapax made a Miles Vorkosigan reference! I win cookies.

[Dash]

Obama did much better on this with his "there are not red states and blue states; there is the United States of America."

McCain should have said something like, "Yes, we're Republicans, but we're Americans first." Also, the "America, we are with you" is pretty bad, with its "we/you" dichotomy and the "you" being America. (The "we" presumably being "not-America".) "...and we are going to care about these people in their time of need"--nope. "Care about" is too easily contrasted with "do something about"--possibly he meant "care for." But he makes it sound like it's an effort even to be sympathetic. Better would have been "We are going to take this time to focus on the needs of our fellow citizens who are dealing with the effects of the hurricane."

Actually, what McCain should have said, is, "Cindy, my dear? Do we have a bit of extra cash lying around? Do you think you could ring up [Dash] and offer to pay great whopping sums of money to vet all my utterances for rhetorical ineptitudes?" But, alas he didn't.

[rm]

McCain's distaste explains his relationship with the press. They love him for expressing distaste, a postmodern ironic distance, as he goes about doing nasty political dirty tricks. How I hate doing this, he says to them, and they know that ontologically, in his deepest substance, he is an honest upright maverick, so it doesn't matter how much, merely phenomenologically, he appears to be slimy. He's still Honest John. This is called eating the barbeque, or riding the tire swing.

[hapax]

Wow, Dr. Science, that was fast!

[spinetingler]

Posted by: smgt Hey spinetingler, good to see another Tar Heel Fred fan

Eh, other Carolina. :)

[Tonio]

As a longtime Monty Python fan, I applaud McCain’s choice of Michael Palin for the VP spot. Not only is he an accomplished writer and performer, he is also eminently knowledgeable about foreign affairs from his many world travels for the BBC. I’m sure his British citizenship will be no problem......uh, never mind.

Seriously, the choice of Sarah Palin could be described as a type of hat - saddling McCain with a VP whose stances on social issues match that of the dominionist religious right. I don't know if Palin herself is a dominionist.

[LL]

It's indicative of how un-American the Republican Party is that its candidate doesn't see anything wrong with declaring that caring about people is an American thing to do, but not a Republican thing. It's not that surprising. They've been saying this for a pretty long time, that it's OK to not care about people who aren't like them. Black people, poor people, non-Christian people. They've made their contempt for these groups quite clear. They can use all the code words and PR bullshit they want (although they have so much contempt for these and other people, they don't try that hard to cover it up), but their real feelings are obvious. Whether McCain actually feels this way himself is beside the point; he is at the beck and call of people who do.

[David K. M. Klaus]

> "I want to thank my fellow Republicans as we take off
> our Republican hats and put on our American hats...."

Just as Roger Boisjoly and other engineers who warned of the dangers of frozen O-rings on the Challenger solid rocket boosters were told to "take off your engineering hats and put on your management hats" before advising whether to launch on that fateful day.

I think some of them should be made to eat some of these hats.

[Doctor Science]

Compare and contrast: Obama on gustav:

That spirit of looking out for one another, that core value that says I am my brothers’ keeper, I am my sister’s keeper, that spirit is most evident during times of great tragedy, it’s most evident during times of great hardship, it’s most evident when natural disasters strike because we understand that only God has control and so it takes it out of the realm of politics. We all understand that we have to come together.

But that spirit can’t just be restricted to moments of great catastrophe. Because as I stand here today and look out at the thousands of folks who have gathered here today, I know that there’s some folks that are going through their own quiet storms.

[not someone else]

It's a nice point, but I think Les is correct. It's a call to put aside partisanship and petty advantage to do something nice, in language I would've thought is fairly well-known, and it doesn't really make sense to read much into that.

"Or", not "exclusive or", and so forth.

[Praline]

What have you got against dogs?

Dogs judge morality by loyalty, lick the hand that beats them, and attack those who look weak in order to assert their dominance. That's pretty familiar from the last eight years, no?

Obviously McCain didn't deliberately imply that Republican and American are mutually exclusive. But the interesting thing is that he's let slip his party's long-proclaimed monopoly on the term. For years, the Republicans have been yelling 'AMERICA!!!' every time they open their mouths, every time a policy needs deciding, every time anybody challenges them, whether from home or abroad. They've done a pretty good job at selling 'Republican' and 'American' as synonymous; that's the main reason why former supporters now pretty much hate America. Republicans took over the brand. They presented Republicanism as quintessentially, inextricably American.

With that strategy, you'd expect them to insist that to be true Americans, you have to respond to a crisis like Republicans. I think two things have happened: they've got themselves a leader who lacks Bush's knack for embodying a certain kind of American archetype (basically the cowboy; not being American it makes me want to punch him, but it seems to work), and the Democrats have finally found themselves a leader who's capable of taking back the definition of 'American' and redefining it to suit himself. Obama's good at rhetoric, and McCain's flailing: I think he was trying to imitate Obama's inclusiveness shtick, but messed it up.

[Ecks]

Interesting. I too am not quite sold on the finer semantic points of the exegesis here either, but agree that the underlying analysis is bang on. I've been seeing this back-and-forth conflicted McCain too. He really enjoys being the maverick and having the free wheeling press conferences, but he's learned that if you want to be elected to the big boys seat you just can't do that. You have to play a disciplined on-message game with no ad libing that creates quotes that can be taken out of context, no speaking of your mind in ways that might end up offending some obscure and narrow, but important constituency, etc. I think he hates it, but he's willing to 'put that hat on' if that's what it takes. He learned his lesson there in 2000.

I also think this is why he really wanted Palin - he feels like it's bold and iconoclastic enough that he can enjoy throwing sand up in everyone's faces again, plus his party strategists signed off on it because she's one of the few people who stand a chance of injecting life back into the campaign. George Lakoff has a super interesting argument about why she's such a good choice, and why the Dems are currently playing her completely wrong - but that Obama might not. It makes an extra interesting fit with Fred's argument above. Check it out (it's short, I promise).

[Elmo]

As a non-aligned nation, my hat varies with the season. Right now it's straw and has these buttons on the hat band:

• "Out Now" -- an old timer from the days when Nixon conducted "preventive reaction" strikes into Cambodia (even the so-called Bush Doctrine was recyled).


• Steel Workers Organizing Committee Dues Paid June 1937 CIO


• Huckleberry Hound for Vice President (from a Cracker Jack box in 1968).


• Don't Tread On Me (Peoples Bicentennial Commission)

[Jim]

With that strategy, you'd expect them to insist that to be true Americans, you have to respond to a crisis like Republicans. I think two things have happened

And Katrina happened. Let's not forget that. McCain has a real problem here. Gustav reminds everybody of Katrina and how Bush smirked while New Orleans flooded.

While McCain, with his shoot-from-the-hip speaking style, is not necessarily known for carefully crafted utterances, I think there may be a bit of triangulation in his "hat" talk. He has to distance himself from the Republican Party's reputation for indifference to the lives of the poor and lower-middle class, most (but not only) evident in the Bush Administration's response to hurricanes and flooding in New Orleans three years ago.

Picking a vice presidential nominee whose story could have come out of a Lifetime movie seems like another attempt to appeal to the same voters who would be turned off by Republican indifference to the problems of the bottom half of the income distribution as well.

[Tennille Merkle]

Thanks for putting that out there. The mutually exclusive American and Republican hats really caught my attention when I heard it on the news yesterday. We need more attention given to that Freudian slip.

[Jason]

Can I just add, if it hasn't been said already, that it's not particularly magnanimous for McCain to direct donations to the Red Cross instead of his campaign when he's locked into public financing as of this week and can no longer spend any money he's raised.

[Ecks]

Wow, normally reliable conservative apologist David Brooks complements McCain and Palin (to be expected), then outlines why she's completely the wrong choice for vice president. Apparently, Palin, like McCain, does't think on a left right axis, they think on a public vs. private interest axis. They share the strength of wanting to face down corruption, and the weakness of not having a steady predictable programmatic sensibility that is needed for more complex issues like dealing with the economy and health care. Ergo she's a poor choice as she doesn't provide what he needed. Nifty. And there's even some truth to it I think.

[JMiller]

I do kind of have to wonder if his choice of Palin for VP is an attempt at self-sabotage -- "I hate myself for doing this again after being smeared out of 2000 by the people I've been publicly sucking up to for years, so I'm going to come across as awful as I can and if people still vote for me, well, they deserve who they get. Now, who's the most spectacularly unqualified fountain of pseudo-conservative cognitive dissonance I can get to round out this disaster of a ticket?"

I'm just wistfully sad that I really liked him in 2000...

[Richard Hershberger]

The interesting aspect of McCain's candidacy is that over the past eight or so years he has taken every possible position on a wide range of issues, including those which supposedly are his core issues such as torture. This means that someone looking for an excuse to vote for him can find support no matter what, so long as this person can persuade himself that this reflects the "real McCain".

I actually think that McCain's real opinions are easy to figure out: they are what he campaigned on eight years ago. The more subtle point is that McCain's real opinions are not necessarily relevant. He has spent the past year selling out as needed, and he is no longer a free agent. The Palin selection is the perfect illustration of this. Does anyone really think that she was his first choice? But he gave Karl Rove a veto, doing what he had to do.

The result of this is that the "real McCain" is irrelevent. The real McCain isn't running. The McCain who is running is the wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party establishment. We have already seen how well that works out.

[woody, tokin librul]

Until, that is, his party yanks his leash back in. And then he turns back into his parties dog. And it hurts me, because I believe that if McCain wasn't on that leash, he could probably be a great man.

what planet have you been living on? What color's the sky there, where John McCshitstain's a person of honor, honesty, and principle?

He's a lying, unprincipled, grasping, greedy, scum-sucking baby-killer.

End of story...

[Linus Bern]

Here is a quote from John McCain I found in Canada's Globe and Mail:

"This is just one of those moments in history where you have to put America first," he said yesterday on NBC's Today Show in a pre-taped interview that was one of his few media appearances.

Does he mean that most of the time he doesn't put America first? It sounds like that is what he says.

[Tehanu]

I don't care about Sarah Palin's family or personal life -- that is, I have some opinions, but they're irrelevant. I don't even care about whether McCain should have vetted her better. To me, what's important is that he doesn't even really know her -- he'd met her, what, once? twice? before choosing her to become the most powerful person in the world if anything happens to him. What kind of judgment does that show? Pretty piss-poor judgment, I think. And what kind of judgment has she shown in accepting? If I had her experience, I'd be looking at him and saying, "Are you crazy? I have no national experience, no foreign policy experience [or interests either, apparently] -- I'm not qualified!"

but then, I'm not a religious loon with a sense of total entitlement and a belief that any dumbass Jeebus-shouter can run a trillion-dollar enterprise like the federal government....

[Tehanu]

I forgot to add, the Republicans vs. Americans thing just shows more of McCain's bad judgment. Even if I agreed with him about anything, I couldn't get past that.

[Amaryllis]

And as I've seen asked elsewhere, why is the Vice-President slot the sole prerogative of the Presidential nominee? At least the members of the party which he (someday she) represents, selected the candidate for president from the available contenders. Why doesn't the VP candidacy go to the runner-up? or get voted on at the convention? or become subject to congressional approval after the election, like other presidential appointments? or something other than imperial fiat? Back-room politicking doesn't count; I mean some open procedure to allow some representation of the voters, other than the candidate's inner circle, to judge a potential President.

[Amaryllis]

And, for the benefit of the librarians among us, Sarah Palin is reportedly a book banner (remover, not flag!):
[Former Wasilla mayor] Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.
Granted, the source is a bitter political rival, but still. What does Palin expect as "full support" from a librarian?

[Fred Davis]

And as I've seen asked elsewhere, why is the Vice-President slot the sole prerogative of the Presidential nominee?

Well basically the P/VP relationship is kind of like pokemon; you want your main pokemon to be a pretty good all round fighter who can deal with most anything that gets thrown at it, but at the same time it's generally a good idea to have your secondary pokemon be one that can handle things that your main pokemon is weak against, even if it's not all that good of an fighter in and of itself.

There's also the problem that if McCain had had to be VP to Bush, 9/11 probably would have involved McCain losing his temper and attempting to fly a plane into Bush's smug chimp-like face.

[Consumer Unit 5012]

IIRC, originally, the VP was the person who'd gotten the second most votes for President. They realized what a bad idea that was when the Prez and VP were two people who HATED each other, and the rules got changed.

[Reynard]

Posted by Consumer Unit 5012: IIRC, originally, the VP was the person who'd gotten the second most votes for President. They realized what a bad idea that was when the Prez and VP were two people who HATED each other, and the rules got changed.

You're referring to the Twelfth Amendment. Actually, it might have been nice if Gore had become Dubya's Veep -- he might have counter-balanced some of the craziness of the current Administration with a bit of common sense. (With the added bonus that there'd be one less Dick in the White House...)

[Drake Pope]

Well basically the P/VP relationship is kind of like pokemon; you want your main pokemon to be a pretty good all round fighter who can deal with most anything that gets thrown at it, but at the same time it's generally a good idea to have your secondary pokemon be one that can handle things that your main pokemon is weak against, even if it's not all that good of an fighter in and of itself.

No, no, hold on. You'll never get anywhere if you only have two Pokemon. The Gym leaders will crush you like a child's dreams. What America needs to do is have one President and a whole bunch of Vice-Presidents. That way, there are more people in the line of succession in case the President falls ill. Another cool feature is that each Vice-President can have a certain field of expertise, such as commerce, law enforcement, or foreign affairs. All of these Vice Presidents can advise the President while assembled as some sort of home furniture, such as a Presidential Wardrobe or a Commode.

[hapax]

Amaryllis: What does Palin expect as "full support" from a librarian?

Well, from my personal experience, that means Palin got charged overdue fines when she told them that she had brought that book back already, and she hadn't finished it yet, and anyway those mooseburger stains were already on it when I checked it out, and did I mention that I pay your salary?

[Tonio]

I agree in principle that Palin's family situation should not be an issue. A poster on another board offered an intriguing theory - that McCain's campaign found out about the situation in advance, and felt they could use it to boost the candidate's pro-life credentials. While that theory sounds too cynical for me, I can't disregard the possibility.

Odd coincidence that Palin has beauty pageant experience, Carol McCean was a swimsuit model, and Cindy McCain was a junior rodeo queen.

Also, the other day I saw this bumper sticker: "Barack Hussein Obama? I don't think so..." I shook my head in sadness.

[Ecks]

Interesting. A Wasilla native has written out her thoughts and experiences with Palin. This goes into very slightly more depth on the library thing, and seems to generally gibe with the Time article linked above. It's not entirely a flattering portrait. Individual testimony like this is a bit bush league of course (no pun intended - though this description DOES paint her as having many of Bush's worst traits), but what else do we have to work with. If she emerges from obscurity we're stuck looking at obscure sources.

[J Neo Marvin]

Adter putting up with eight years of Republicans saying that they were the only REAL Americans and the rest of us are terrorist appeasing unpatriotic hippie scum, I find this concept of "Republican hats" and "American hats" strangely quaint.