... Condoleezza Rice becomes John McCain's vice presidential running mate. I honestly don't know for whom I will vote at this point; I am a long way, emotionally at least, from committing to one of these tragically unfortunate choices.
Condi is reported to be actively campaigning for the veep slot, and the thought of a McCain-Rice ticket just might drive me over the top (over the edge?) to vote Obama. (Not Clinton, though--at least I don't think so. A Clinton presidency--the triumphal return of what Mark Levin calls the Clinton Crime Family--would be something along the lines of a national sin. And, as a friend of mine who, as a campaign-trailing news hound, watches these people at a closer focus than most, has pointed out, the Clintons would very professionally put in place a machine-driven legacy whose impact would be felt for generations--many political cycles, anyhow.) I think an Obama administration would be a disaster, but one that flares up and burns out and is gone, a la the supremely awful Carter administration.
What could we count on President O accomplishing? The withdrawal of America from Iraq under conditions and terms agreed to with, at best, a total lack of understanding of the war on Islamic jihad currently under way (such as it is) and the Islamization process that is proceeding apace undeterred.
Why would that be better than McCain-Rice digging in to "win" in Iraq? Because I don't think a combined McCain-Rice team has a much better understanding of what is going on than Obama. Different, but not much better, and quite possibly, in the long run, worse. (And, when it comes to Rice, quite possibly not all that much different from Obama.) The prospect of more of the same (Bush policies) would seem to augur much worse for our stretched and strained (and too often railroaded) armed forces. As I frequently try to point out in my columns, there is nothing for the US to "win" in Iraq (or Afghanistan for that matter). There is certainly not an ally in the "war on terrror" (or war on anything else) there, and we are wasting our men and materiel chasing a chimerical solidarity, a delusional common purpose with a chronically fractious and alien culture that is ultimately more hostile to our presence and to our values than it is to our enemies. McCain is bad enough on this count, but with Rice in the mix for four more years, her weirdly self-referential vision of foreign affairs--Ich bin ein Bombinghamers--would likely be more ruinous to our country than even an Obama era.
Blech.
Luckily (?), I don't think John McCain will pick Condi Rice. While it gives him a politically correctly appealing "twofer" on sex and race, it gives him too much i.d. with the Bush administration and its policies. He already has plenty, and if his strategy relies on non-GOP voters helping him into the White House--and by all accounts it does--Rice would quite likely alienate that swath of liberal/moderate/Independent citizenry he's counting on.
Blech again.