Brian Till

Sun, Oct 12, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Washington — “It’s embarrassing,” an Italian foreign correspondent relented after diplomacy was pushed aside at the vice presidential debate. Not surprisingly, he was — along with others who nodded in agreement — referencing the nomination of Sarah Palin. “There are many qualified, intelligent women in the Republican Party, why her?”

It was the single thing that struck me most in St. Louis — more than Biden’s ability to bite his tongue or Palin’s high-school-debate-team-like performance.

Tuesday’s second presidential debate left me asking a similar question: Why him?

McCain on entitlements: “Look, it’s not that hard to fix Social Security, Tom.”

McCain on Afghanistan: “I’ll get Osama bin Laden, my friends. I’ll get him. I know how to get him. I’ll get him no matter what and I know how to do it.”

So why is it then, Sen. McCain, if you have this wealth of knowledge — and possibly superhuman abilities — that you and your Republican colleagues have been unable to fix Social Security, unable to catch Osama bin Laden, unable to stave off recession or the Wall Street greed you railed against Tuesday night?

“In Lebanon, I stood up to President Reagan, my hero,” McCain said, then offered minutes later: “You know, my hero is a guy named Teddy Roosevelt.”

He first said, “I know that we can reprocess the spent nuclear fuel. The Japanese, the British, the French do it. And we can do it, too. Sen. Obama has opposed that,” but then quipped, “Sen. Obama has approved storage and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel.”

He was erratic. His jokes didn’t hit. To a question of who might be the secretary of the Treasury, McCain responded, “Not you, Tom.”

Good decision, Senator.

Tuesday also featured the first mention of a McCain plan to buy up failed mortgages. It’s an appealing, daring new vision that would keep people in their homes — but the candidate failed to articulate the novelty and importance of such a plan. He failed to convey to “Main Street” how his plan would change lives.

McCain offered several interesting jabs to those following every moment of the campaign — references to Biden’s hair, Obama’s unwillingness to go on a joint town hall meeting tour with McCain, and NBC’s perceived leftward leanings — but overwhelmingly, for those not enamored with every moment of the race, he came across as vague and somewhat incoherent. Ironically, Obama, the candidate lambasted early for lack of substance, felt better versed and equipped with plans to actually institute change. McCain found himself drudging for the past — where Obama often assaulted his record — as his opponent managed to connect with the problems of today.

We’ve tormented the world over the past eight years, the nation that inspired so many in all corners of the globe, that remained a force for good despite occasional missteps and detours from the course. “America will break your heart again and again if you’re not careful,” an Egyptian cab driver once told me.

We need to get back to being the America that inspires, not the America that inspires fear.

I came across a quote last week from a highly respected former European foreign minister: “Obama will either be the next FDR, or a C-minus Jimmy Carter.”

We need a transformational president. Obama might be one; he also may not be. But I’m hard-pressed to believe that the incoherent man wandering behind Obama at the debate, who nominated a young governor incapable of naming a single newspaper she reads, is the right person to lead us forward.

Brian Till, one of the nation’s youngest syndicated columnists, writes for Creators Syndicate. He also is a research associate for the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington.