MCCAIN'T

ven though it's a midterm election year, interesting political news has been pretty hard to come by lately. As a columnist, I find this extremely problematic. I mean, I could discuss John Kerry's promised filibuster over ANWR drilling but that issue's been cold for a year. I could talk about how the international community is letting Israel cover up a massacre in Jenin but reviewing Joe Sacco's Palestine has me kind of Israeled out for the week. Wait, I've got it! I'll write a reality-evading paean to desperation about John McCain running for President as a Democrat!

No, that won't work either; Joshua Green (in The Washington Monthly) and Jonathan Chait (in The New Republic) have both already done it this week. Green and Chait are, it seems, McCainiacs and they've fallen prey to the idea that the War will destroy the Democratic Party. Bush has become the fierce and wrathful god, W, ruler of Good And Evil and wearer of the Half-Suit Of Political Armor. W's Half-Suit protects the entire left side of his being from any and all attacks. It stands to reason, for these believers in the cause, that a sling from the right is necessary to slay the beast.

Hey, just like his dad!

Let's step into the way-back machine for a moment at travel 11 years into the past. As summer '91 approached, various Democrats were lining up to take on Poppy, who was still riding high on that post-Saddam approval rating. Problem was, the American economy was a wreck and he'd broken the one direct promise he'd made as a candidate. A year and half later, a hillbilly governor that the American public had never heard of took the White House away.

If the next Presidential election were held this November instead of two years from this November, there'd still be at least two Democrats who could win. Bush's war on some terrorists is coming apart at the seams and is in no condition to stand up to the heat of a campaign. His domestic policy consists mainly of letting John Ashcroft stamp out whatever he feels needs stamping out this week. Many of the talking heads will surely disagree with me but I think it's clear that Al Gore and Tom Daschle have become more competitive opponents since September 11.

I want to give Green and Chait the benefit of the doubt and believe they just took some off-the-cuff beltway gossip and ran with it because even the Florida Governor's race is turning out boring. But just in case, let's do a rundown of things the McCainiacs would like to forget about:

• The big one: McCain was one of the Keating Five. The Keating Five was a group of five Senators (McCain, along with Alan Cranston (D-CA), Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), Donald Riegle (D-MI) and true-blue American hero John Glenn (D-OH)) brought before the Senate Ethics Committee for trading favors for campaign contributions. In the real world we call this bribery. McCain has never refered to this series of events in trying to convince people to support campaign finance reform.
• McCain can make nice on camera but is a legendary jackass while off. Do Green and Chait really think the guy who said, "Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno," can get elected as a Democrat?
• His "straight talk" thing is an act. At the beginning of the 2000 campaign he very loudly promised to "always tell the truth." And then during the South Carolina primary campaign, only three states in, he lied about his position regarding the Confederate flag. After Bush's dirty tricks factory crushed him at the polls, he apologized. If he's willing to lie about something as minute as the Confederate flag flying over South Carolina's capitol, why does anybody think he's shooting from the hip about anything else?

All that said, this idea is shot down by McCain's voting record. He may not be liked by the GOP power structure but that has to do only with his going after their crown prince. The guy is a conservative through and through; he has nothing to offer the Democratic Party and it has nothing to offer him. If he really wants to make a go of it in '04 -- and I'm not sure he does -- it's independent all the way.

NUCULAR BRINKSMANSHIP

he subject of nuclear attack has died down a bit since the Bush administration has had to start dividing the terrorists into "Evil," "Sort Of Evil," "Could These Guy Be Freedom Fighters?" and "Allied Government" categories but I want to get back into it. I've been examining the so-called "nuclear posture review" that was leaked to the press last month.

The list points to Libya, Syria, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, China and Russia as possible nuclear targets in the event that they used weapons of mass destruction first or in the event of "surprising military developments." The Bush administration insists this is not a first strike policy. However, the definitions of the words "first," "strike" and "policy" say otherwise. But like all things leaked, the political is more important here than the practical. This list is about using a new boogeyman to get the old arms race back. Russia is the real giveaway, much the way the Minnesota Twins' inclusion on baseball's hit list showed the move to be a money-grabbing ploy. There's no reason to believe Russia is any more likely to be hit with American nukes now than eight months ago or three years ago. So why send a note out to the press saying, "Psst, Russia's cruising for a bruising"?

The other would-be targets aren't necessarily any better. We've been hearing for over a decade how much Saddam Hussein doesn't care about the people of Iraq. According to Physicians for Social Responsibility, a B61-11 attack on Saddam's bunker would kill 20,000. Are we to believe that he now cares enough for this to be a deterrent? And wasn't he supposed to be dying of some rare blood disorder? I guess I'm not as up on the Saddam propaganda as I should be.

I'm actually kind of hoping North Korea tries something. I don't think Bush really wants to be the guy to let the genie out of the bottle, he just wants to get his friends some tall federal dollars and say "nucular" on TV like a brain-damaged eight-year old. But if NK made a move, he'd feel a ton of pressure from within to play the cowboy and a ton of pressure from without -- including Japan and South Korea, I'd wager -- to sit and chill. Perhaps when he leaves office Bush can find a new career as a professional virtual reality inhabitant, playing out all the scenarios his former constituents might find interesting. That probably wouldn't work, though, as it assumes he's currently inhabiting this real reality.

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Aaron Veenstra is the managing editor of Etc. House Productions.
The Fast Lane appears weekly.