Drinking game debate - McCain and Obama meet at last

Two days. That's how much time John McCain and his sorry excuse for a presidential campaign has left to try to fool me and my fellow Americans. Two days. Once the Republican candidate finally shares a stage with the Democratic candidate on Friday, none of the lies and half-truths will matter, and nothing will be able to save John McCain from becoming the Bob Dole of the 21st Century.

Before I talk about the debate, I have to mention John McCain’s running mate. A lot of people have asked me why I haven’t written about Sarah Palin. At first, I was waiting until she did one of the Sunday shows. I figured Brokaw or Schieffer or even Stefanopolous would come up with the big "Get," sit her down, and ask her 10 minutes of questions about her positions on the issues and her record. That was the plan — then a month of Sundays passed without her talking to anyone (I don’t count Gibson or Hannity). No interviews with the Washington press corps, no interviews with the press traveling with the McCain campaign, and she won’t let her husband or her employees (civil servants working for the state of Alaska) answer subpoenas. I give her credit for being a fast learner. She’s only been on the national stage for a month and she’s already mastered the Karl Rove playbook on how to simultaneously
ignore the law and the press.

I’m not going to write about Sarah Palin because I only get 800 words per week and I’ve already wasted too many on her. She only matters in as much as she shows how piss-poor John McCain’s judgment is. For this man (of the 1,000-page medical history and the multiple bouts with cancer) to tell me she’s qualified to take over as president and commander in chief insults my intelligence.

Dedicating an entire column to this woman would insult my readers.

Enough about Alaska and its governor. Let’s get back to reality. I’ve been writing about this campaign and the transcendent nature of the Democratic candidate for over 18 months and readers of this column should know by now that I was the first person to go on the record predicting an Obama presidency back in April of 2007. If you’ve paid attention to the campaign at all before now, you’re ahead of the game. The debate on Friday is expected to have a viewing audience of over 100 million people, a good percentage of whom will be tuning in for the first time.

They missed Jeremiah Wright and John Hagee. They didn’t catch Barack Obama’s "bitter" comments in San Francisco or John McCain’s "hundred year war" exchange in New Hampshire. It’s not their fault; they were busy living their lives, raising their kids, going to work, and worrying about how to make ends meet.

With the news from Wall Street last week, you can bet they’re paying attention now. This debate is supposed to be about foreign policy, but look for it to shift to domestic issues after about a minute-and-a-half because it’s the American worker that’s going to be asked to pick up the tab to bail out another one of the country’s biggest investment banks while still paying fees to two banks to take money out of the ATM, and bail out the world’s largest insurance company at a time when most people can’t afford health coverage.

How many times can John McCain say our economy is fundamentally sound before Barack Obama brings up the fact that not every American family is worth over $100 million like the McCains?

How long can John McCain really expect to talk about the "surge" tactic in Iraq and its so-called "success" before Barack Obama brings up the opportunity costs at home of spending $10 billion per month in Iraq with zero return on our investment five years later? How much longer does John McCain think he can focus on his support for the "surge" tactic and hide the fact that he’s been whole-heartedly behind the president’s strategy and policies in Iraq from the beginning?

Who does he think he’s fooling?

As for me, I’ll be watching the debate either on PBS or on C-Span because I don’t want to be watching commercials for deodorant when I could be watching John McCain sweat. I’ll be playing a drinking game that involves taking a shot whenever John McCain says something ridiculous (like "Sarah Palin is ready to be president"),tells a lie (like "the fundamentals of our economy are strong"), or comes up with a ridiculous lie (like "I didn’t know I own eight homes and 13 cars").

Knowing John McCain, I’ll probably have to re-watch Friday’s debate on TiVo on Saturday because I’m gonna be pretty drunk.