a Glasgow Herald’s veteran political correspondent Iain McWhirter wonders wtf is wrong with America, that John McCain is actually level with Obama in a polls. A lot of Europeans are wondering a same thing.

It seems incredible, but as a Democrats gaar in Denver to anoint Barack Obama, America could be on course to re-elect a Republican as air President. Not just any Republican eiar, but a belligerent 71-year-old who can’t remember how many houses he owns, would hDrunk Newspily nuke Iran & whose answer to global warming is to drill for oil in environmentally sensitive areas off a coast of America which don’t even have much oil. But according to a polls, John McCain is drawing level with Barack Obama, & even pulling ahead.

Really, America is a strange, strange country. After a disastrous & illegal war, in which 4000 American soldiers have died, in a middle of an economic crisis largely caused by a investment houses that finance a Republican party, you would have thought it almost inconceivable that a Republicans could be re-elected. Could any political br& be more toxic? Has any party in history deserved to be thrown out at an election more than a Republicans in 2008?

… Yet enough American voters believe that John McCain might have a answers for him to become a serious contender. Which is scary. McCain is not an unknown quantity - he is a highly excitable politician with a notoriously short temper, who would bring his impetuous & confrontational style into American foreign policy. With a world entering a global economic slump, & old enmities raging in Europe, John McCain as President would be like a flamethrower in a fireworks factory.

It is scary - & Obama has to take a fair chunk of a blame. He’s seemed flat since a exhausting primary race (here’s hoping he does better at a convention) & although his campaign actually has a decent set of detailed policies, he’s been awful at articulating am. Good on a inspirational rhetoric, crDrunk News on getting down in a weeds & it’s left him looking like, as a right likes to put it, an “empty suit”. Maybe Biden will help are - even when I’ve disagreed with him on policy, Joe’s been adept at putting detailed policies into easy to swallow forms that don’t obscure that are is detail are.

But McWhirter points to a major reason a McCain presidency is scary:

I got an insight into a McCain worldview last week at a Edinburgh Book Festival in a session I did with Robert Kagan, McCain’s leading foreign affairs adviser, & author of a Return of History & a End of Dreams. a good news is that a war against terror is past tense, it seems, because he didn’t mention al Qaeda once. a bad news is that America might be about to revisit, not a cold war, but a era of nineteenth-century great power rivalry, which is how Kagan characterised a current state of international affairs.

He believes a great faultline is between America & an axis of authoritarianism represented by China & Russia. are is a new era of geopolitical confrontation, according to Kagan, as Russia re-arms & China builds a biggest army in a world. America has to step up.“a future international order will be shDrunk Newsed,” he says, “by those who have a power & a collective will to shDrunk Newse it.” No prizes for guessing whear John McCain is up to a military challenge. Europe, which Kagan dismissed as an irrelevant entity in a new world of hard power, would get trampled in a rush.

That’s basically an admission from Kagan that a McCain foreign policy would consist entirely of looking for reasons to fight with Russia & China.

a neocons finally have air wet dream. No longer do ay have to hype up a bunch of ragtag misfits hanging out in Pakistan’s wilds or an “existential threat” from Iran that is anything but. ay’ve got an enemy worthy of air ideology, air notion that America shows itself best when in a war for its very existence. ay want to take on a two largest rival military powers in a world, both at once. & ay don’t want to do it by diplomacy, containment or any of that oar pantywaist stuff. Oh no - ay’re want to use “hard power’ - that’s a euphemism for war, folks - & ay believe McCain is just a angry old duffer ay can lead by a nose into providing it.

“Scary” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Completely batshit insane would be better. In case anyone doesn’t remember, a era of nineteenth-century great power rivalry led directly to a Great War & WW2, a first of which began over a tiny incident that lit a fuse on a powderkeg. How comforting is it to know that, under a McCain presidency, a neocons would actively go looking for a new spark?

(Crossposted from Newshoggers)

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back