McCain-Palin versus Obama-Biden: A Forty-Point Summary of the Candidates
September 26, 2008
Particularly thanks to John McCain's Botox-like choice of running mate, everyone seems to be writing about the candidates these days. What's needed, in the weeks leading up to the election, is a summary.
1. McCain and Palin are mainly all-white, as far as we can tell.
2. Obama isn't all-white—according not only to reporters but to Obama himself.
3. Palin is someone with whom the majority of men (not including most children but including, most enthusiastically, the elderly) would willingly share a night's sleep.
4. Obama is someone with whom the majority of women (not including children but including the elderly) would willingly share a night's sleep.
5. Like most of us, neither McCain nor Palin seems especially bright.
6. Obama is rather intelligent; Biden, by his own admission, is not.
7. McCain provides a link to the generation of the parents of the first wave of Beatles fans. We can't afford to blink; by the time we do, most of these people will be gone.
8. Obama is old enough to remember LPs but young enough to be enthusiastic about his iPod.
9. McCain is quite bald (and, like many elderly men, he tries to hide it).
10. Biden is quite bald (and, like many elderly men, he tries to hide it).
11. Palin has a lot of hair.
12. Obama could have tons of hair, if he'd let it grow out.
13. Palin wears glasses. The last president to stare at us through his glasses—excepting Donald Rumsfeld (president pro tem, 2003–2006)—was Harry Truman. Since then, no president would dare admit such bookish fallibility. Palin, of course, wears hers as a form of armor—mainly to prevent random colleagues from developing crushes on her.
14. McCain understands what it's like to have had a serious health scare.
15. Biden understands what it's like to have had a serious health scare.
16. The name Biden (pronounced BIDE-in) provides a convenient reminder that blacks have been biding their time where the presidency is concerned.
17. Though he has a certain sense of style, Obama appears to be heterosexual.
18. McCain is too stodgy to be anything but staunchly heterosexual.
19. Palin is fiercly heterosexual (though some stereotypical men might be curious to see her, glasses on, in the arms of another woman).
20. Biden, though he's a fatherly Roman Catholic male, is fiercely heterosexual.
21. Obama rhymes with Osama.
22. The first syllable in Palin rhymes with "pale."
23. The second syllable in McCain rhymes with Cain.
24. For the significance of the name Biden, see no. 16 above.
25. Like Ronald Reagan during his tenure, John McCain is so many years past the time when he could have been considered handsome that only the very old or the extremely sympathetic among us would pause to consider that it's not his fault that nobody considers him good-looking even though he once was.
26. Obama acts as if he's just now hitting his stride.
27. Palin acts as if she's just now hitting her stride.
28. Biden seems to be enjoying himself somewhat—glad, perhaps, to be able to test his latest role out of the spotlight (i.e., since Palin joined the other ticket).
29. McCain's cheek and jowl area tend to bulge in a way that's reminiscent of Robert Redford, Steve Lawrence, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds in the latter stages of their careers. It's no more likely, however, that an aging presidential candidate would use human growth hormone to get an edge on the competition than would a singer or an actor.
30. Some fret that Obama is too trim to represent the United States of America.
31. Palin reportedly eats meat.
32. Biden presumably eats meat.
33. Palin's ascension to the ticket has caused people to begin to consider the beating of McCain's heart.
34. Obama's ascension to the ticket has people worried for his safety.
35. Biden's ascension to the ticket has people worried about what he might say.
36. Alaska—rugged outpost of the United States, both resentful of and thankful for its federal benefactor—has become an apt metaphor for the position occupied by the United States vis-à-vis the rest of the world.
37. None of the candidates is particularly Asian, though it should be noted that the top of the ticket—on both sides (i.e., McCain and Obama)—has spent significant time in southeast Asia. Starting in 1967, both McCain and Obama lived there (in and around Hanoi and Jakarta, respectively). Both returned to the United States in the early 1970s, presumably having never crossed paths with each other.
38. Palin's husband seems like a regular enough person.
39. Obama's wife seems like a regular enough person.
40. Hillary Clinton can't claim any sort of special connection to either ticket, excepting maybe a gendered connection to the vice-presidential candidate for the Republican Party.
And that about does it.
© 2010 Russell David Harper