I'm a Fundamental and So Are You?

John McCain has once again found within himself the ability to morph into an entirely different candidate. Just when you think he might settle on one identity, he slips your grasp, only to pop-up minutes later wearing a new mask and touting a new slogan. First he was the experienced candidate. Then he was the Maverick. Then he was the candidate for change. This time he came out of the phone booth as the barrel-chested, pro-regulation, greed fighting machine; an image he obviously believes appeals to some part of his delusional base.

After 26 years of being consistently and at time even painstakingly anti-regulation, John woke up this morning, looked himself in the mirror and said, "What the heck. What could one day of sane economic principles really do to hurt my chances?" And the answer of course is nothing. This obvious populist pandering will do nothing to harm his chances unless voters start to care about characteristics like honesty, consistency and reliability in their leaders. Most people who do care about those traits are now either firmly in Obama's camp or making the long trek from the outer reaches of the far Right.

And while Barack was making speeches outlining, in detail, his plan for getting our economy back on track, what was McCain doing? Two things: burying his head in the sand by calling for the establishment of a committee and spewing bullshit about Fundamentals.

The former is less insulting to our intelligence as voters than the latter. He should be embarrassed by his inability to offer clear and substantive recommendations to stem this recession. Calling for a commission to be established instead of standing up and leading is a perfect example of what we could expect from a President McCain who is out of touch with reality and therefore unable to address it effectively. The man can't use a computer and can't text, how can we expect him to guide us to safe ground in the 21st century?

Regarding the second activity that John's been dabbling in - spewing bullshit to cover his ass - he's been repeating this line about how "the fundamentals of our economy are still strong" since his campaign began. Barack cited an independent study in his last speech in Colorado which found 16 instances in what McCain has used the line. And now that it has become painfully obvious to any breathing organism on the planet that our economy's core is crumbling, what does McCain do? The only thing he can do; twist his rhetoric. Reality, the son-of-a-gun, had reared its ugly head and stuck its tongue out at him as if to say "You'll never escape me, no matter how hard you try."

So we've now learned from John that the "fundamentals" of the economy are not to be judged by looking at the performance of Wall St. or the international markets or our national debt. Nope. According to John, to see how strong the fundamentals of our economy are all the American worker needs is a mirror. Because we, the employed American citizens, are the fundamentals that John's been talking about this whole time!

How stupid are we?! All this time we've been worrying about Freddie and Fannie and Merrill and Lehman when all we needed to do was hit the bench press, do some squats and then flex. We are strong! We are the economy! The economy is strong! Screw work, I'm going to the gym to get my country back on track!

It's truly a shame that it's come to this. One candidate is out there offering solutions to our worst economic crisis in 70 years while the other is flattering the collective ego of delusional citizens with nonsensical, two-faced remarks.

And they're dead even in the polls. Simply terrifying.