No one has mentioned one of
the most startling measures of just how long it has been since the
Milwaukee Brewers played in a postseason game: Those powder-blueclad
1982 Brewers played the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series the
same year John McCain became a freshman Congressman from Arizona.
As the oldest man in U.S. history to run for a first term as president, McCain might be expected to get a little confused once in a while and accidentally pick up the TV remote when the phone rings.
But
last week was spectacular even for McCain. He suddenly announced that
he was suspending his campaign and then appeared to go right on
campaigning.
He said he had to work on a plan to save the
nation’s economy and then reportedly sat quietly through a White House
meeting without expressing a single, intelligible thought about how to
save the economy.
He tried to duck the first presidential
debate and then showed up at the last minute. There he talked tough
about facing down the president of Iran, whose name he couldn’t
pronounce, but couldn’t even bring himself to look his opponent, Sen.
Barack Obama, in the eye.
The only thing that kept McCain from appearing to be the most clueless candidate on a national ticket was the performance of his running mate, Sarah Palin, in another of her rare, carefully chosen interviews, this time with Katie Couric of CBS.
Asked to defend her absurd claim that she has foreign policy experience because she can see Russia from Alaska, Palin explained it this way: “That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land—boundary that we have with—Canada … Well, it certainly does because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, they’re in the state that I’m the executive of.”
Asked if she had ever been involved in any negotiations
with her Russian neighbors, Palin said: “We have trade missions back
and forth. We—we do—it’s very important when you consider even national
security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the
airspace of the United States of America, where—where do they go? It’s
Alaska. It’s just right over the border.
“It is from Alaska
that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this
very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are
right next to— our state.”
It wasn’t a “Saturday Night Live” skit. It was the real Republican candidate for vice president of the United States.
Disrespecting the Debate
As
a piece of U.S. history himself, John McCain should have had more
respect for the historic first debate that took place at the University
of Mississippi than to threaten to trash it.
Not only was it the first debate featuring the oldest man ever to run for a first presidential term and the first African-American Democratic nominee for president, but it also was taking place in Oxford, Miss. Instead, Ole McCain went out of his way to diss Ole Miss.
Oxford is a beautiful, little, Southern college town where something very ugly happened in 1962. When courts ordered Ole Miss to accept the enrollment of James Meredith, the first African-American student in the university’s history, white students and townspeople rioted against federal marshals, resulting in two deaths, 160 injured marshals and 200 arrests. More than 20,000 federal troops, more than the population of Oxford itself, patrolled the campus for the rest of the year.
Today, the many Civil
War memorials on campus are joined by a monument to Meredith’s historic
enrollment and the integration of the university, dedicated in 2006.
Black enrollment has increased to 14% at Ole Miss, compared to 7% at
the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which professes to be an urban
university.
It was to highlight the university’s racial
progress and to try to overcome the ugly images from its past that Ole
Miss eagerly sought to host the historic first debate of this election
year.
Obama certainly had no qualms about traveling to Oxford in 2008
to debate his opponent. Ironically, it was the old white guy who
threatened to boycott the event.
It was a bizarre, historic
week in both presidential politics and Milwaukee baseball. The Brewers,
the team that last went to the World Series the year John McCain was a
rookie Congressman, clinched a playoff spot in the next-to-last inning
of the last game of the season.
Young Ryan Braun, who was last
year’s National League rookie of the year and this year’s presumptive
team MVP, sent the Brewers to the postseason by knocking in winning
home runs in two out of the final four games.
It’s true: This is no country for old men.
What’s your take? Write: editor@shepex.com or comment on this story online at www.expressmilwaukee.com.
