After McCain began running his “the American president Americans have been waiting for” ads, I lost the last vestiges of my half-belief that he was really going to run an honorable campaign of decency and ideas and admitted to myself that it would just be more warmed over red-baiting and dark insinuations about patriotism and heritage. Thus, I don’t feel terribly guilty about linking to http://www.thingsyoungerthanmccain.com, where we learn that McCain is older than Bugs Bunny, the polio vaccine, Alaska, AARP, and the ballpoint pen.
That’s all sort of funny, but it also points to a more serious critique of McCain’s mindset, which mixes a deep desire for World War II-style heroics with a habituation to the paranoia and fear typical of the Cold War-era. What you don’t see in McCain is much recognition that the world has changed, that today’s threats are considerably less deadly than yesterday’s dangers, and that it’s been a very long time since America was a rigidly ordered society that needed its leaders to provide appropriate martial values.
