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In This Issue

• CU Lions Massacred by Ballroom Dancing 77-3
• Sen. McCain: “Just Let Me Retire.”
• From the Archives
• Joey Dʼs Last Word on Not Sweating in School
• Everybody Poops...But How Do They Do It?
• A Scientific Study on the Phenomenon of Pre-Gaming
• A First-Hand Look at the Indigenous Peoples of Butler Library: The Ivy League Gone Wild
• Holiday Greeting Cards
• George W. Bush: The Final Countdown
• CULBA: The Columbia Underground Listing of Barnard Ability
• Donʼt Like Waking Up in Your Own Vomit?
• THE FED’s Reading Week Drinking Games
• Gossip Girl Comes to Columbia University
• Four out of Five Dentists Agree...
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 24.3

The McCain campaign was marred by malapropism, Freudian slip, and sarcasm, three elements so easily recorded and replayed by the irreverent news cycle that they may have acted as the sole nails necessary to seal the campaign’s coffin. Twenty four-hour noise-makers like CNN captured John McCain’s supposed disregard for political courtesy and social norms by replaying snippets where he might have forgotten the name of his running mate, or where he called his wife a “cunt”. But just as the sound bite should not have won votes, it should not have lost them either. Before we drove to the polls, we listened to montages revealing “senior moments,” or “racism,” but now we must ask ourselves: did we judge him too harshly?

February 28, 2008: McCain declared to a Texas crowd that he was a “proud conservative liberal republican.” Though the media pounced, careful reporting can reveal what nuance McCain truly conveyed. The Liberal Republican Party was established in 1870 to oppose the reelection of Ulysses Grant, supporting instead Horace Greeley, a man attacked for his lack of government experience. A “conservative” is one who rejects change in the political system, such as the abolishment of the Party in 1872, when McCain himself was only a child. But here we see that McCain’s loyalty to the defunct party is actually an endorsement of the man who is attacked for the same reasons as was its one and only nominee: Barack Obama.

March 18, 2008: The Senator voiced several times his concern that Iran (Shiite) was training al-Qa‘ida (Sunni) fighters in Iraq. This statement was brilliant for one major reason: it is incredibly stupid. Any responsible political reporter would understand that a candidate intending to get elected could not possibly repeat such an error. Surrounded by advisers at all times, McCain was surely chastised by all those staffers unaware of the Senator’s true plan. Repeating such a novice “gaffe” seven times could only have been an act of veteran strategy: the strategy of defeat.

May 11, 2008: McCain quoted the power of eminent domain as providing that “private property may not be taken for public use.” While the Constitution explains exactly the opposite, the Senator was not in error. McCain contradicted the supreme document in American politics, and specifically its treatment of private property. What is the highest office created by that selfsame document? The Presidency. What is the property the most private? One’s own body. Here, McCain spoke in code under the radar of his captors: his own body had been appropriated for public use as the President.

October 8, 2008: Perhaps the most frequently quoted McCain-ism in recent weeks is his address of Pennsylvanians as “fellow prisoners”. His supporters defended the Senator by pointing to his time as a prisoner of war, but even they were misled: a “prisoner” is one who is currently imprisoned, not formerly so, as a veteran, a former prisoner, or a convict. McCain was then trapped inside his campaign, forced to act as if he wanted the votes he was seeking. By referring to that crowd as “fellow,” he tried to tell them that they were trapped in the deliberately sinking campaign as well, but that they, unlike him, held the key to freedom.

Nay-sayers and Joe-the-Cynics may point out that McCain corrected himself after each of these “mistakes,” but that in no way changes McCain’s message. McCain understood the paradox of his situation: to get voters to listen to his message, and not listen to him, he needed to make it seem like he only intended to be listened to. And only then would his listeners ignore him.

His advertisements perpetually used false, easily refutable information to attack Obama, instead of focusing on his centralizing positions or McCain’s own expertise. If McCain had actually intended the ads to be effective, he would not have approved those that vaguely taunted Obama as “risky,” “famous,” or “born [in]… Chicago.” These attacks proved that McCain never wanted to attack Obama at all.

By refusing to succumb to mere sensationalist punditry, John McCain’s lucidity is revealed. His supposed “slip-ups” could not have been clearer. Throughout his campaign, McCain was reaching out to anyone who would listen, handing them a message in bottle meant to be cracked. He shouted that he did not want to run for office, that he was trapped in his campaign, and that voters should choose Barack Obama. If you listened to McCain’s misinterpreted sound bites and changed your vote for him to one for Obama, you did exactly the right thing, but for all the wrong reasons.