Other than the robotic, sycophantic and incessant mention of the “Joe the plumber”, the most memorable line from McCain’s debate performance on Wednesday was (loosely paraphrased) “Senator Obama, If you wanted to run against George Bush, you should have run for President four years ago.” Very witty, but what’s grindingly obvious is that John McCain’s entire policy chassis is exactly the same as Dubyas. His economic policy is to cut taxes on the wealthiest (like Dubya did) and then magically watch the economy grow, healthily and sustainably (like it did under Dubya…)

I was looking forward to the McCain campaign.
I genuinely thought I would be drawing cartoons about the substantive back and fore between he and Obama, two worthy adversaries.
Senator McCain could even have won this election, but Candidate McCain is a lost cause. I know so many people who thought they were going to vote for him, based on his powerful senate persona and pragmatic, (mostly) non-ideological principles. His caricature of a Presidential campaign has frittered all that precious political capital. The Republican diaspora – who couldn’t stand Senator McCain going into this election season – instead of learning to like him, demanded that he morph into an anti-intellectual right-wing character assassin. His pick of the unprincipled Governor Palin iced the cake.

He could have been a contender.

This week was an attention-getter, huh?! Everyone’s retirement plans got detoured and we lost trillions while spending hundreds of billions trying to fix the mess…But did you notice oil prices are at least headed in the right direction. Yay!

Since coming top in the race to be the nation’s most property-taxed, beleaguered citizens of Westchester County are starting to get a wee bit sensitive about their County Government’s expenditures. Despite the fact most people probably wouldn’t recognize him if they saw him scoring a dunkaccino at their local Dunkin Donuts, County Exec. Andy Spano’s crack security detail has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is a small number within the County budget…But it’s all about appearances Andy. So obviously, this cartoon pretty much wrote itself.

The red meat republicans have been demanding the gloves come off, and Gov. Palin has been delivering. Understandably, the McCain camp is desperately trying to turn the economically sensitive polls around, but their strategy is not well thought out. For starters, calling a man who is running for President of the US un-American just leaves normal people scratching their heads. And doing that while those same people are watching their retirement nest eggs evaporate is self-destructive. In the current economic climate, a fact-free pit bull is likely to leave McCain merely frostbitten.

Mcain/Palin need to sow just enough seeds of doubt about Obama among “swing” voters in order to tip the election, so they have devised a surprise strategy to label him a terrorist. Of course, they also have to overcome voters doubts about McCain/Palin’s ability to comprehend and handle the economy.
So they are wisely sticking with “Obama is a terrorist.” I’m glad they have gone with a substantive, ideas-based campaign for October. That should certainly get the attention of someone who has lost a job, a nest egg, or is in say, foreclosure.

Mayor Bloomberg is expected to void NYC’s voter-approved term limits and run for a third term, citing tumultuous times and a need for continuity of leadership. Giuliani tried the same thing after 9/11. You get extra credit if you can tell me who Rudy’s successor was…

For what it’s worth, I think Bloomberg has been a mostly good mayor. I am not attempting to draw parallels to their respective mayoral terms. In that respect, I think Bloomberg is in a completely different league than the vituperative Mr. Giuliani.

Uh-oh! A boating metaphor! Sigh…I am working through a bad cold…So my creative process is currently moving in sloooow motion. And my drawing abilities are leaving much to be desired. Situation normal then, I hear you say?

I watched the VP debate and – shockingly – have an opinion on how it played out…
I’ll save that one for Sunday’s cartoon, though.