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Sarah, Plain and Tall

Which of course her speech was. Well, it wasn't really, but it gave me a smart-aleck chance to reference Patricia McLachlan's book and play, which is quite sweet. It's all about a lonely man at odds with the people around him, who writes away for a mail order bride. I'm sure that there is something mischievous to be done with it.

McCain's role in the selection of his vice-presidential nominee has given rise to all sorts of rumours about his real preferences, such as the assurance that at least three people have given me who are not in a position to know that he 'really wanted Joe Lieberman'. I wonder.

Sometimes--often, in fact--individuals become their grandparents and those who reach eminence live out the fantasies of their youth. In 1952, when McCain was 16, Dwight Eisenhower, Conqueror of Europe, led the Republicans back to power after twenty years in the wilderness as a war hero. At his side (and often under the pavement) was Richard Nixon.

Nixon was attacked as 'young', 'inexperienced' 'vicious' and part of a new wave of right-wing westerners. Ike ran against a cerebral candidate from Illinois, who could give great speeches but not connect, and I wonder if this isn't part of the psychodrama McCain is living out right now, with a gender twist.

If it is, the Arizonan is in for a bit of a shock, I think. Obama, as the links below to yesterday's post suggest, is just not lying down and playing Adlai, and Biden is a sort of Irish American Kefauver (who ran with Adlai in '56, but not '52), if you can have such a thing. There is a real game on here, I think, which is why I've been blogging about it so much.

The other election I had cause to think of was that of 1836. The newly-formed Democrat Party was running Martin Van Buren and Colonel Richard Johnson, who turned out to have had a relationship with a 'mulatto' woman but who stayed on the ticket. The Democrats were, at that time, a party which did just about everything it could to worsen the lives and prevent the votes of free black people and women from influencing ballots in any way.

Opponents, in a state of frenzy, ran three candidates against Van Buren, one for each major region. The idea was to throw the election for President into the House of Representatives, and that for the Vice-President into the Senate.

The effort succeeded in part, and the Vice-presidency was consequently decided in the Senate. I wonder what would happen if that occurred this November. I thought, after all, that there was a chance of it in 2004; a Bush-Edwards administration would have been a sight to behold, as would a Kerry-Cheney one.

What if the election comes down, as Real Clear Politics' electoral map suggests if you fiddle with it, to a Virginia-Ohio-North Carolina tie, with Obama winning New Mexico, Colorado and Michigan and McCain winning Nevada and one or both of Virginia and Ohio? Then the candidates would have 269 votes each, and the Congress would decide the presidency and vice-presidency.

Just a thought. McCain-Biden or Obama-Palin, anyone?

The picture at the top of this blog is, of course, of Eva Peron. Those of Dame Edna Everage as a Moonie Ponds housewife are practically impossible to lift from this computer, otherwise I would have used one of them.

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