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"Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

( H.L. Mencken, on practical politics )

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I watched approximately the last half of the three-hour coverage of the Republican convention on PBS last night. (Wow, that got ugly in places. But maybe I'll analyze the layers of that later. I've got this snark to get out of the way first.)

For a while there, I got the impression that the speakers were fetishizing McCain's war injuries -- even more than the POW experience in which they were inflicted (or were his injuries from the crash and just not treated while he was a POW? I've lost track). I don't think that's what they intended, or were consciously thinking, but as an outsider looking in I found it a wee bit creepy; as though they were saying, "Look! We got us a maimed guy for a pet! The Dems don't have one of these -- neener neener neener! Isn't this cool, how he can't raise his arms? Makes him special, a limited-edition. And we've got one and they don't!"

But even when they weren't saying things that sounded to my ears like an odd involuntary-bodymod fetish, one of the messages I got from three or four speakers was, "John McCain deserves to be president, because of what he's done for our country already and what he's suffered."

And y'know what? After hearing that enough times, it's starting to actually make sense to me -- maybe they're right. Maybe this is the time when we should award the presidency to someone who deserves it as a reward having been a POW in Vietnam.

I read somewhere that there were about 600 POWs in Vietnam. A four-year presidential term is what, 1,461 days, right? So if they were all still alive, that'd be about two and a half days each. But I don't know how many are still alive -- is it few enough that each could be president for a week?

We can even let McCain decide whether he wants to be president for the first week of the term, or the last week (I'm guessing that those will be the most desirable slots -- you get to either pick a cabinet, or write pardons), since it was his campaign that came up with the idea that former POWs deserve to be president. It's only fair, right?

( A modest proposal regarding former prisoners of war and the presidency )

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