If I Were John McCain

by Burt Prelutsky

Let me state for the record that I do not want to be president. For one thing, I don’t want to move east because I hate cold weather. For another, I make it a point to avoid any event that requires a suit and tie, and, so far as I can tell, the president has to get dressed up to go to the bathroom. Besides, the mere thought of having to spend time with people like Robert Byrd, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Barney Frank, Harry Reid and Christopher Dodd, is enough to give me a migraine. However, if the only alternative to my having to take the job is for Barack Obama to get it, I’ll make the sacrifice.

So, my question is, if I’m willing to give up nice weather and tennis shorts for the good of our beloved country, why isn’t John McCain at least willing to take off the kid gloves? I haven’t seen this little energy since Fred Thompson dropped his hat in the ring.

It’s my own theory that the liberals have squawked so much about McCain’s alleged temper that his handlers have been driving home the message that the senator must remain cool, calm and collected. That happens to be very professional and very predictable advice. The only problem is that it’s also very stupid. At a time when the American public wants to round up every politician, every CEO and every economic advisor who had anything to do with the current meltdown and hang their sorry carcasses from the tallest tree, McCain should be the guy carrying the rope.

Heck, Harry Truman got angrier at a music critic who gave his daughter Margaret a bad review than McCain has gotten with the liberal crew who got us into this mess by pandering to poor people -- mainly blacks and Latinos -- by first buying their votes with absurd home loans, and then sticking the rest of us with the $700 billion bill.

If I were John McCain, I would skip the next debate. After those first two snooze festivals, nobody except maybe Bob Schieffer’s mother will be tuning in anyway. Instead, I would buy up an hour on all three networks. I would walk on stage and announce, “I’ve fired all my handlers. Anyone who needs to be told what to say and how to say it by a bunch of high-priced media wonks doesn’t deserve to be president of the United States.”

Next, I would say that Sarah Palin is my choice for vice-president not because she’s a woman, but because she’s the best person for the job, because of her values, her character and her brains. “But,” I would go on, “the voters deserve to know as much as possible about the judgment of a man who wants to be their leader. So, although your president doesn’t and shouldn’t have handlers, he does have advisors. These would be mine: "…Secretary of State Newt Gingrich, Secretary of the Treasury Mitt Romney, Attorney General Rudy Giuliani…" As I read off the names of my entire cabinet, I would have each of them join me on stage, and after introducing Secretary of Defense Joe Lieberman, I would say, “This is my team, America.”

Then, I would go on to announce that during my first week in the Oval Office, I would instruct Attorney General Giuliani to investigate and, wherever possible, indict anyone who played a role in the sub-prime scandal. I would go on to say that I was instructing the Justice Department to bring RICO charges against ACORN for engaging in an ongoing criminal conspiracy to suborn the election process in America.

I would also ask Congress to make sexual crimes against children a capital offense.

I would then devote the remainder of the hour to my undistinguished opponent. I would say that liberals keep insisting that attempts to connect Barack Obama to the unsavory likes of Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Father Pfleger, Saul Alinsky, William Ayers and ACORN, is nothing more or less than guilt by association. I wouldn’t even try to deny it. Why would I bother? After all, when a man is 47 years old and everyone and everything he’s been closely associated with, including even the church he attended for most of his adult life, is radical, corrupt or racist, most sensible Americans would agree with me that it’s a pattern, and not dismiss it as mere partisanship.

Obama, we keep being told, is brilliant. But his brilliance seems to be that of a born con man. He will turn on a dime and lie about anything from his place of birth to his relationship with native-born terrorists William Ayers and Mrs. Ayers, a fellow ex-member of the Weather Underground, Bernadine Dohrn. For Obama to claim that Ayers was just a guy who happened to live in his neighborhood, a fellow he hadn’t realized was a role model for Timothy McVeigh, is such a blatant lie that it amazes me that anyone, even such pinheads as Alan Colmes, Bill Maher and Chris Matthews, is buying it.

For one thing, even if Obama was a kid when Ayers, Dohrn and their pals were bombing or trying to bomb the Pentagon, the Capitol Building and a New York police station, Ayers is a famous guy in Chicago -- and he never hid his light under a bushel, only his explosives.

However, the real point of the Obama-Ayers relationship isn’t based on what Ayers was doing back in the 60s, but, rather, what he and his political protégé were doing just a few years ago. We keep hearing Obama’s defenders tell us that these two virtual strangers served on a couple of boards together. They make them sound like Mother Teresa and Sister Kenny. What they don’t get around to mentioning is that Ayers not only hosted the party kicking off Obama’s political career in his living room, but that they=2 0served together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a group headed up for six years by Obama.

I have no idea how the Annenberg Foundation thought its money would be spent, but I doubt if the guy who made his fortune as the publisher of Seventeen and TV Guide, and was a pal of Ronald Reagan, had any idea that millions that were supposed to be used to improve Chicago’s schools would have some of it funneled off to Mike Klonsky, a founder of the Maoist Party of America; some to ACORN’s coffers; and some to Obama’s political war chest.

Even the money that theoretically went towards education was used by Ayers and Obama to promote their left-wing agenda. It was Ayers’ stated purpose that the schools infuse students and their parents with a radical political commitment that downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. Ayers, who got word of his first teaching job while in jail for leading a draft board sit-in, and who has proudly identified himself as “a radical leftist, a small ‘c’ communist,” has clearly defined his approach to education: “Teachers should be community organizers dedicated to providing resistance to American racism and oppression.”

As the hour ended, I would conclude by saying, “I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Ayers for explaining the actual duties and responsibilities of a community organizer. Until now, we had been led to believe that the position called for a combination of Jesus Christ and Superman. Now we know that any anti-American small ‘c’ communist twerp can handle the job. Of course I’m not suggesting that just because Mr. Ayers hates our country and that, while discussing his past terrorist activity, said that his only regret is that he didn’t set off more bombs, we should assume the worst about Sen. Obama. After all, when they last sat on the Annenberg Challenge board together, Barack Obama was a mere tot, barely 40 years old.”