Motus Mentis

Things have moved along a little since this morning’s post went up.

It has seemed obvious since yesterday that John McCain, having galloped off to Washington in the role of the United States Cavalry, needed — in order for this flamboyant gesture not to be seen as the most transparent political grandstanding — actually to do something once he got there. It appears, however, that he simply sat rather diffidently in today’s meeting with our president (who seems quite stunned himself), and it does not appear now that Mr. McCain had any clear idea whatsoever of exactly what “leadership” role he was going to play once he blew into town. (To be fair, nobody else has any idea what to do either, of course. As far as anyone can tell, this really might be the End of Days.)

Meanwhile, in case anyone had any lingering doubts that Sarah Palin was utterly, stupefyingly unfit for high national office, she has today laid them to rest in an excruciating interview with Katie Couric — in which she blathered so nervously and incoherently that it became abundantly clear that were she, by an all-too-plausible sequence of electoral and actuarial happenstance, to assume the Presidency, we would quickly find ourselves pining for George Bush’s eloquence and subtlety of mind.

I actually find myself, for the first time, feeling sorry for Ms. Palin; she is very clearly far out of her depth, and to have her folksy, feisty façade stripped off so mercilessly in full view, quite literally, of the whole world, must be painful. She, in her blithe ignorance, might have dreamt that she was equal to the occasion, but she most certainly is not — and John McCain must have known it when he chose her, in what can now only be seen as a extraordinarily reckless, and cruel, tactical gamble. Though Sarah Palin may not be the sort to be racked by self-doubt, even she must realize by now that the cheers of the crowd are turning to jeers, and that she stands exposed as a shallow-minded woman of grotesquely overweening ambition.

In other news, the widening economic sinkhole engulfed another towering edifice this afternoon: in the largest bank failure in the history of the world, Washington Mutual has ceased to exist.