By Franceso Semprini

Translated By Ryan Dreher

June 4th, 2008

The Sen­a­tor flies to Luisiana and pre­pares for a duel

Francesco Sem­prini

NEW YORK

While Amer­ica awaits the depart­ing steps of Hillary Clin­ton to clear the play­ing field for Barack Obama, John McCain makes haste to the South­ern States. The Repub­li­can sen­a­tor spent the last night of the pri­maries in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, close to his wife Cindy, his daugh­ter Meghan, a suc­cess­ful blog­ger with a pas­sion for Ital­ian fash­ion, and Piyush “Bobbu” Jin­dal, the gov­er­nor of the State and poten­tial Vice President.

Jin­dal is the young promise of the “Grand Old Party” (the Repub­li­can Party): an ambi­tious repub­li­can of Indian ori­gin, known for being an ultra-conservative, for being anti-abortion, an enemy of evo­lu­tion­ism, as well as for his zeal­ous Catholi­cism to which he was con­verted as a young boy. Pinned by Obama as a right­ist, he has become, at only 36 years of age, the most junior of US sen­a­tors and a per­fect com­pli­ment to McCain, or, in even plainer terms, the key to the elec­toral vote to which the Ari­zona senator’s eyes are ever fixed.

In this sense, the choice of Luisiana for the last night of the pri­maries seems far from inci­den­tal, also because amid hot-dogs and exit-polls and with Novem­ber 4 around the cor­ner, the two allies are fully immersed in a brain­storm­ing ses­sion of tac­tics and strate­gies. The syn­chronic­ity is utterly per­fect: with Obama only within inches of a nom­i­na­tion, it is nec­es­sary to incite con­fu­sion among the adver­saries, for the rival to work at the flanks of the enemy to cap­ture any waver­ing votes. McCain’s task will be, on one hand, to prove that his adver­sary has too lit­tle expe­ri­ence to be Pres­i­dent and this entails con­vey­ing clearly and in no uncer­tain terms his weak points in terms of for­eign pol­icy and mil­i­tary exper­tise. On the other hand, he will also have to force Obama within the con­fines of the far-left box, explains Larry Sabato, polit­i­cal ana­lyst and direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Pol­i­tics. This is why he left his attack accus­ing Obama of assert­ing that more time was need in Iraq and then to per­sist in push­ing for the with­drawal of troops, not to men­tion his hav­ing vot­ing against the res­o­lu­tion for rein­force­ments put forth by David Petraeus: “If that isn’t inex­pe­ri­ence…”, affirmed the Republican.

The demo­c­ra­tic sen­a­tor runs for cover but not in time to announce the next trip to the Golf which will deliver yet another broad­side from the right shore of the Potomac. “It is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine what could be gained from a meet­ing with Ahmedine­jad, apart from inter­mit­tent anti-Semitic jabs”, McCain lashed out. Within sight is an open­ing into nego­ti­a­tions with a “spon­sor of ter­ror­ism”, some­thing the black sen­a­tor has main­tained is averse to the insert­ing of Pas­daran among ter­ror­ist cells.

McCain’s ideas are clear: an iron hand against Obama. But what she be used against Clin­ton? A vel­vet hand? “Her elec­toral cam­paign has been praise­wor­thy and is deserv­ing of some­thing impor­tant”, he says. “To cre­ate con­fu­sion among adver­saries is the sec­ond col­umn of this strat­egy”, explains Sabato. And for the final blow, there is the ace in the hole – tax pol­icy, to be pre­cise. “A pres­i­dent Obama means more taxes, which is a pos­i­tive for­mula for the health sec­tor as was the case in the Clin­ton era”, con­cludes Sabato, “but in phases of slow eco­nomic growth, as we are see­ing today, he risks putting the coun­try on its knees.”