Bob McCain & John Dole
Fueled by the cheap adrenalin of the election, I was like the junkie inserting the needle of politics such that even the skin in the fitness center went unnoticed: "He'd be a good man if there was an election held every day." Yet it had played out with enough inevitability that it seemed McCain was phoning it in, at least until Palin and even there there was a hint of Bob Dole; I recall the latter reaching out to the base with the then exciting Jack Kemp, the young tax-cutting star with a full head of hair. The Republican playbook was predictable this year to the point of parody when McCain went on Saturday Night Live in order to appeal to the grandkids as a cuddly elder statesman. I see erectile dysfunction ads in the senator’s future.
Maybe part of it was that the Republicans in general and McCain in particular felt they should lose, because of their weak governance combined with the historic aspect of a potential first black president. It would be bad form not to let the younger fella win, especially if you don’t think the results would be all that horrible. Which I think is what McCain thought. He never gave off a sense of urgency or appeared too concerned about an Obama presidency.
I’m told that major league baseball players see winning the pennant as more important than winning the Series. Their fans feel quite differently, or at least I did. I thought of second place as a bigger tragedy than fourth. But the players themselves are playing mostly for pride and that pride is mostly influenced by playing against those they know, within their own league. “Just to get to the World Series is enough,” they say. It’s personal in the playoffs. The Series guarantees the white hot spotlight and that's enough. I got something of the same vibe with McCain, for whom the Republican primary was his pennant win.
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