Spectacle: McCain's Grandstanding and the Couric Interview

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UPFRONT DISCLOSURE: I am still learning how to embed so I apologize to my readers for the CBS commercials that play before Couric's interview. As an artist, I want copyright to be honored so I'm going with what the CBS news site offered rather than using a bootleg. Speed ahead after the rotten commercial to mark 1:46 to watch the question at hand.

So I've been pretty quiet on my blog in the last few weeks. I've been keeping up with the daily ups and downs of this election, trying to make some sort of sense of it all. I will post more frequently as my understanding and questions grow.

What I am left with after the past few weeks is that the McCain campaign is using spectacle to distract the American public. What is the spectacle? To me, the spectacle is using non-events to shift focus from what matters onto a subject that is meaningless, relatively speaking, in order to keep the public from focusing on what is really important. Palin's nomination, lipstick on pigs and pit bulls were spectacle but that was nothing compared to this week.

So let's look at this past week. Earlier in the week, McCain said he hadn't had a chance to read the THREE page Paulson bailout plan, even though this had been a top issue for days. Then on Wednesday, he cancels an interview with David Letterman, who allegedly is too funny for these serious times, citing that he had to return to Washington immediately to work on the bailout.

He stayed in New York for another 22 hours giving interviews and speaking.

When he returned to Washington, he met with Republican leaders in the House and the hereto for tentatively agreed to plan was kiboshed.

At the same time, CBS - a little under the radar with all these news events occurring - was broadcasting Palin's intereviews with Couric which I caught on the internet. In case you missed it, Palin was woefully incoherent. Some conservative commentators (men and women) have called on her to step down.

What I am not clear on is how successful that spectacle strategy has been. To me, someone who has been watching 3-4 hours of political coverage and reading yards of commentary (conservative and liberal) a day, I am not convinced that it has been working. Can people really not see what I see? That said, perhaps not. Outside the Beltway, 60,000 people showed up at a recent rally for Palin.

My question is: was the spectacle of calling off the debate, suspending the campaign actually a move to distract people from the Couric interview? Was the McCain campaign looking for a bold strategy, as they are fond of saying, to give us something - something bright and shiny - to distract the electorate from the interview in which Palin (see mark 1:46) blithered about the bailout. Her incoherence is stunning. The McCain campaign knew this. Was the grandstanding of Senator McCain designed to keep us from focusing too much on her?

Next...my thoughts on Congress actually having to work.