“McCourt here!” Malachy’s voice thundered down my phone. After the customary salutations and blessings upon my cranium and household, the Limerick man got down to brass tacks. “What are you doing right now, young man?”
One should always have a million tasks ready for rattling off when political activists come calling. When I couldn’t think if even one, I was summoned uptown to lend vocal support to the Grannies Against the War, who were protesting the pending arrival of John McCain. The Senator, it turned out, was slated to speak to a gathering of august Irish-American Republicans.
Less than an hour later, with banner aloft, I joined in somewhat tentatively with Malachy and the fiery Grannies who howled like Ozzy Osbourne every time a startled Irish-American sought to gain entrance to the Republican Club. I have no beef with republicans, and hold no brief for democrats. I do, however, oppose the ongoing war in Iraq.
Notwithstanding his support for this catastrophe, like many I have a soft spot for Senator McCain who soon thereafter arrived. Instead of slinking into the club surrounded by security, the distinguished gentleman approached us bellowers and flashed the warmest of smiles. It was a small, gracious token but one that I remembered when he recently garnered the Republican nomination. He is a great man and, unlike many a barstool patriot, he has actually suffered for his country and his principles.
I wish him the best but he would make a disastrous president. He speaks of staying the course for 100 years in Iraq, when every 100 days drives us deeper in a financial and moral morass.
And what of our two Democratic contenders? Every day they seem to revel in an outrageously costly beauty contest with far less substance than American Idol.
On the one hand we have Senator Clinton unleashing irrelevant TV nightmare ads about “red phones,” when the truth is that when she was called upon to make an important decision she allowed our present ruling cabal to indulge their imperial dreams in an unwarranted invasion of a wreck of a country half-way around the globe.
Meanwhile, Senator Obama demands that we have faith in his power to effect “change”.
I’m all in favor of change – even a national renewal is fine by me – but the man knows little about human nature if he thinks that the young, healthy and affluent won’t opt out of any non-compulsory health insurance system. Besides which, does he really believe the various insurance companies are going to sit down for tea and scones and graciously cede away the strangled they have on the present system?
Yet we citizens are allowing these two contestants to trivialize the election process by indulging them in their expensive playground squabble. How about a couple of tough questions for a change?
Like how the hell do we vacate Iraq as quickly as possible but with some semblance of grace? Apart from getting our own people out, how are we going to evacuate the thousands of Iraqis who have risked their lives working for us? We don’t have much of a track record so far. Sweden has already granted asylum to many more of these people than the security conscious Bushies?
And how do we intend shoring up social security and Medicare/Medicaid if neither candidate can bring themselves down to mention that awful T-word – taxes?
What do we do with a debt including an educational system that turns out bucketfuls of college graduates, 80 percent of whom couldn’t find Iraq on a blank map if it was to save their PlayStations?
With the country sliding into a recession where over 50 percent of homeowners now owe more mortgages than the worth of their houses, one would think we’d be insisting on substantive answers.
Instead, rock on! American Idol still rules! But, hey, at least all three remaining candidates believe in evolution, or do they? Has anyone asked lately? There are a lot of uncommitted evangelical votes floating around since Black 47’s new bass player, Mike Huckabee, quit the race.
I have no problem with Senator Obama and Clinton fighting it out to the Democratic Convention in August. Perhaps by then they’ll have engaged in some form of meaningful debate rather than insulting an over-entertained, under-informed electorate with their red phones and airy promises.
Maybe then, one of them will prove worthy enough in November to whip a great Republican whose time has passed.
