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Confused by the Republican Establishment response to the results of the New Hampshire primary, I called my favorite inside source in Washington: Ananias Ziegler, media relations director for the Committee That Really Runs America.
What did they have against Sen. John McCain? I wondered. It seemed to me that if the GOP wanted to capture the White House, the party would want a candidate who could win an election outside his home state and a candidate who appealed to a wide spectrum of voters, rather than just the zealots.
This isn't entirely about winning the White
House,
Ziegler cautioned. A lot of it's about
learning your place.
And McCain hasn't learned his?
Precisely. A lot of nerve he has, running for the
presidency when everybody knows that Bush the Younger has
been anointed.
But John McCain is hardly some stepchild from Arkansas who went to college on a scholarship, or the offspring of ne'er-do-well alcoholic shoe salesman in some jerkwater Illinois town, I pointed out.
His father and grandfather were admirals in the U.S. Navy, and McCain belongs to the U.S. Senate, one of the most exclusive clubs on earth with only 100 members, most of them wealthy white guys.
But there are only 50 governors, so that's an even
more exclusive club. And Texas is the largest state with a
Republican governor. Further, its governor is the son of a
president and the grandson of a senator.
So pedigree counts?
Of course it does. Most Americans are closet
monarchists -- look at how much attention we pay to the
British royal family. We've put one presidential son in
the White House, John Quincy Adams. We elected a grandson
once, Benjamin Harrison. The two Roosevelts were
related.
I started to ask a question, but Ziegler interrupted and continued.
Why do you think that Bush the Younger said that
Jesus was his favorite political philosopher? They both
had powerful fathers.
So why is there all this talk about America being the land of opportunity where any child can aspire to be president someday?
American mythology, pure and simple. Look at the
major candidates this time around. Gore's father was a
senator and he went to Harvard. Bradley's was a mere
banker, but he did go to Princeton and he's been a
celebrity all his adult life. Steve Forbes is another
Princeton alumnus, and his father was a millionaire
publisher who catered to America's business elite.
McCain is a mere Naval Academy graduate, and
remember, Annapolis once accepted Jimmy Carter, the son of
some red-clay Georgia farmer.
But McCain was a prisoner of war who was tortured for more than five years, and refused to be released early. He wasn't some weekend warrior in a guard unit who was 100 percent for the war unless he had to fight in it.
Yeah, it's hard to attack him for being
insufficiently patriotic. So instead, we spread rumors
that he might have become mentally deranged as a result of
his captivity in North Vietnam -- in fact, our Hollywood
allies are arranging for a big re-release of 'The
Manchurian Candidate' if he gets past South
Carolina.
But there's no evidence of mental problems.
What do you mean, no evidence? The guy sometimes
answers questions off the top of his head, without
following the script that the Committee prepares for all
major candidates. He'll just sit around and chat with you
jackals from the Biased Liberal Media. He hasn't said he'd
shoot or even disown his daughter if she got an abortion.
He keeps saying that big money has too much influence on
politics, and points to his own adventures with Charles
Keating as evidence.
And when it comes to economics, he argues that it's
important to pay down the national debt, rather than
continue sending 13 percent of the federal budget to the
holders of treasury notes and bills. That's a huge
transfer of wealth from labor to capital, and McCain wants
to reduce it.
Just how much more evidence do you need that McCain
unfortunately suffered some sort of brain damage when he
was serving his country? No matter how conservative and
patriotic he might be, this guy is off his rocker to be
running for the Republican nomination.
When Ziegler put it that way, I didn't have an answer. So Bush the Younger will be our next president?
Of course. It'll work just as it did in 1972 when
the Committee ran Ed Muskie for president, and in 1948 with
Tom Dewey, and just between us, the Committee is just as
committed to Bush the Younger.
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