Are you Experienced?

I meant to write this one a week or so ago, when the whole Gen. Wesley Clark kerfuffle exploded. As a liberal, a progressive, as someone who hates America's freedoms (just clipped back a little more by the recent Democratic collapse on FISA, about which more later-- doesn't that just whet your appetite, the promise of more writing about an acronym?), as a proud dirty f---ing hippie, you would think that I'd have Clark's back on this. But I do not. Because, after careful consideration and a coupla thirty-seven bottles of Rumpleminze, I realize what this country needs is the foreign affairs experience of John McCain. After eight years of mush-mouthed incompetence by an alcoholic AWOL fighter pilot with daddy issues that make Oedipus look like-- well, pick some healthy father-son relationship from myth or literature, I can't do everything for you! And call your mom, she'd get a kick out of it—anyway, like someone with less-big Daddy issues, America clamors for change. Surely John Sidney McCain III, fourth or fifth generation military, can at least free us from these crippling daddy issues. John McCain and his surrogates tell us that his experience matters. So I'm looking forward to seeing him put it into practice.

I expect McCain to, within a hundred days of being inaugurated, be shot down and tortured by North Korea, Iran, and Russia. I believe that this tour of shoot down and torture diplomacy will increase America's stature in the world, and win for us concessions on oil prices, a further infusion of cash from China, and a twin luge gold at the next Winter Olympics. Sure it will be tough on a seventysomething man, but presidentin', as we know, is hard work. Oh wait, that's not what he's going to do? Sorry, my bad. So he is going to spend 4 hours each in downtown Pyongyang, Tehran and Moscow in a flak vest, surrounded by US armed forces, and pronounce them peaceful, wonderful places to be? No? He'll go to bat for accused financial criminals in North Korea, Iran, Russia? Marry another billionaire liquor heiress while still married to the last one? No again? Okay, now I'm stumped.

I should make absolutely clear that I'm not belittling the horrific suffering McCain underwent at the hands of people he was bombing, nor diminishing his service in a war conducted under false pretenses. But did that experience make him hate war, and stop him from condoning torture? No, and only for a while. (In a true you-can't-make-this-stuff-up moment, McCain's North Vietnamese torturer supports his Presidential bid.). This experience doesn't seem to come from his Washington career, or legislation that he's passed or championed. So where and what is it, and how does it matter? Because the only Presidential experience that matters is getting more votes than the other guy (Some restrictions apply. Presidency not valid if Supreme Court justices with clear conflicts of interest and/or rigid ideologies are allowed to rule on question. Please study history for more sorry, sordid details.). So for my money, the experience question is still up for grabs. For other people's money --a near perfect rating from big business; flip-flopping on immigration, torture, and tax cuts for the rich --you'll have to ask John McCain what his experience means. Just don't be surprised if he says something bad.