Is McCain in Control?

As the John McCain political campaign has unfolded, the question has begun to arise in my mind as to whether John McCain can control anything. In the first place his campaign staff structure has undergone several changes as the campaign has repeatedly gotten off track. Each time McCain has had trouble restructuring, because, it is said, he has trouble firing people and talking straight to them. He simply moves them around and puts different people in charge. Then he fails to tell those who have been deposed, so to speak.

We heard him pledge a clean campaign. Now we have the news today of a terrible ad that accuses Obama of supporting sex education for kindergartners. It is a deliberate misrepresentation of the real story. The ad states that Obama supported comprehensive sex education for kindergartners. It goes on to say: "Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family."

The part of the sex education bill that applied to young children allowed teachers to warn them about inappropriate touching and sexual predators. At the time Obama made it very clear that he was not in favor of teaching young children detailed sex education. Yet the McCain campaign has twisted it around in such a way that those who do not think for themselves will be repeating it often in the coming weeks. I expect it to show up in my inbox soon.

Finally, there is McCain's VP choice. Sources on the inside say that McCain was going to choose either Tom Ridge or Joe Liberman, but a back door group of fundamentalist evangelists and others of their ilk, made the choice of Palin for him. It sounds as if he still doesn't control his campaign. He wants the presidency so badly, that he has sold his soul to the party and its extreme base. He says he and Palin are "mavericks," but it doesn't show. Palin is a maverick only in her own mind and McCain has fading memories of bucking his party.

So, who will be in control if McCain wins the presidency? His handlers and that group that chose his VP for him, most likely. These are the same people who have influenced George W. Bush and his regime for the last eight years. A McCain presidency will find us fighting the same social battles the right-wingers have championed, while the country sinks further into despair. We will continue to retreat as they threaten our precious U.S. Constitution and place their backward agenda at the forefront. A McCain presidency will place this country closer to the precipice from which we may not recover.