How Did I Do the Impossible?

Considering that I am quite possibly the only person in this country that predicted BOTH of the V.P.s nearly two months before the actual selections, you might imagine that I have some particular knowledge or insight into American politics. And you would be sorely mistaken. Up until about 10 months ago, I had little more than a passing interest in politics. In fact, I largely tried to ignore the subject. So how, you ask, did I determine the Vice-Presidents? I used basic pop psychology. That’s it. And I should mention that I wasn’t a psych major and never even took Psych 101.

You see, I understand Barack Obama to be a supremely arrogant yet secretly insecure individual who, in his frequent hours spent obsessing over himself, would determine that although a person as erudite as himself doesn’t actually need something so outmoded as “experience,” he would stilll assess that the “general public” might require a V.P. with experience in order to “complete” the ticket. So, of course, Barack Obama would then demand a V.P. with the most possible experience. And since Teddy Kennedy has a brain tumor and West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd is 91 years old (not to mention a former klansman), that pretty much meant that his choice had to be Joe Biden. Obama clearly has a serious need for adulation and reverence and so it was clear to me that he would believe that Joe Biden would in a sense “complete” him and best help provide the veneration that he dearly requires.

As for John McCain, he’s a gambler. He’s not the kind of guy that would leave the blackjack table with modest winnings. He’s the type of guy that would put his whole stack in and say, “Either I double it or I walk away with nothing.” We saw this trait in the primary where he pushed all his chips behind the Iraq troop surge when almost the rest of the country was urging that we cut our losses and swiftly withdraw. There’s that now famous footage of him carrying his own luggage through an airport during the darkest days of his campaign. And 8 months later, he has just accepted the Republican nomination for President. And yet most pundits seriously considered that this man would play it safe with a Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty. These “paid” personalities decided to completely ignore all the obvious evidence staring them in their pasty whte faces and instead trotted out the same, tired old pablum such as “The most important thing about Vice-Presidents is that they don’t hurt you.” If I worked at CNN, Fox News, or M(ighty)S(tupid)NBC, I would just save myself the cost of having to hire these blowhards in 2012 and just run the same tape they’ve been using this summer. It won’t make a lick of difference.

In fact, in order to better put myself in the mindset of a raging narcissist and an inveterate gambler, I asked myself what a couple of people I know that fit those descriptions would do. For Obama, I used an arrogant jerkoff I used to know who happened to attend the same alma mater as Barack Obama and thought to myself, who would he choose if he were running for President with Obama’s qualifications? And for McCain, I used a manic depressive friend of mine with a bit of a gambling problem and asked the same question. So there you have it, I utilized an arrogant prick bastard and an unemployed manic depressive gambler as stand-ins for our nominees and I was able to correctly guess who they would choose for their important decisions of the entire Presidential campaign. Scary, isn’t it?

So there you have it.

Additionally, there’s a few articles that I’d like to get off my chest over the next couple of weeks and then I think I might have to take a bit of a break from covering this campaign. It’s starting to feel like 2004 again (which is something I’ll be writing about) and I think things are going to be getting quite ugly in the near future (again, something which I’ll be writing about). I’d rather not have to spend so much of my time thinking about all the ugliness, unplug and put a little bit more of my energy into the start of the NFL season and the MLB playoffs. But before I do that, I want to write about a few things: 1. The Sarah Palin coverage and the damage it has caused 2. I want to explain once and for all why a good number of Clinton supporters are still holding out 3. I want to explain all of the innumerate missed opportunites the Obama campaign had to bring Clinton voters into the fold since May. I realize that items 2 and 3 have obviously been written about elsewhere, but I think I have a take on things that you might find interesting.