Could the nightmare be over?

Today I feel that the nightmare might be over. When Palin was named as McCain’s running mate I was very happy because I thought it signaled surrender. McCain couldn’t have the moderate he wanted so he chose the extremist the Republican base wanted. I thought it was a passive-aggressive move, choosing someone so extreme he couldn’t possibly win.

That was what I thought and then it all went horribly right for McCain-Palin. She delivered her speech well – as if it’s hard to make a good speech with an autocue in front of an already adoring audience – and the polls got better and better for her and McCain.

Then the lies started. When “lipstick on a pig” was peaking last week I was sick to my stomach. Not just because it was crap but because it was crap that the mainstream media (known here on the internet as MSM) lapped it all up. I saw the Republican add replayed on the Australian ABC’s Lateline program and then, online, McCain’s response to the charge that the add was a lie because it suggested Obama had called Palin a pig, when he’d done no such thing.

McCain’s response was that Obama chooses his words carefully and he shouldn’t have said this. When it was put to him that he’d used that exact same expression he said he was talking about Hilary Clinton’s health plan, and that Obama should not have said this.

Am I the only one who reads it this way? It’s okay for McCain to use “lipstick on a pig” to describe the policies of a female opponent. It’s not okay for Obama to use “lipstick on a pig” to describe the policies of his male opponent. Indeed, because McCain is running with a woman Obama’s use of the phrase must apply to her and must, therefore be sexist.

Am I the only one who sees race as a factor here? It is okay for a white man to use the phrase concerning a white woman. It is not okay for a black man to use the phrase about anything or anyone.

But the lies continued and McCain-Palin pulled ahead in the polls. The MSM picked up on the lying trend. It got so bad that Karl Rove said it had gone too far. Karl Rove! That’s like a Labrador saying he’s eaten too much. I watched McCain on The View. Questioned on his lies and her lies he lied and lied again. Commentators, even in the MSM were despairing. Maybe it doesn’t matter if you lie, provided you lie well and often and distract people from the real issues.

Now today – or was it yesterday? – Wall Street has gone nuts and the economy is the big story again. The Daily Kos’s tracking poll has Obama four points up, after being three up yesterday and tied the day before that.

If Obama-Biden change the story from McCain-Palin’s pathetic victim-hood (a black man called me a pig!) to the story of their economic illiteracy and their vicious lies, all might be well. Please let it be so.

In 1980 I was living in Warragul in West Gippsland. At the time it was a sleepy dairy-farming town and I’m quite sure that everyone in my Year 9 class was from a Liberal-voting family. Yet the day after Reagan got in there was widespread and deep despair. How could America elect a man who was so old and had such crazy ideas about the world? This was what a group of conservative, rural Australians thought of Reagan. Bush junior has made Reagan look like Lincoln and McCain-Palin will make Bush look like, well, almost as wise as his father.

It’s just unthinkable and yet in the past week US political junkies like me have had to consider it likely. An Obama win will restore my faith in humanity.