The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!: McCain: Cockroach-in-Chief?

McCain: Cockroach-in-Chief?

To hear some tell it, the vultures are circling John McCain's presidential bid. Crazed by the smell of blood in their beaks, they forget we've seen McCain flameouts before. They also forget he keeps bouncing back with the resiliency of Bill Clinton - or a cockroach.

Everyone knows about McCain's vacation at the Hanoi Hilton - his supporters never let's anyone forget it. In a war known more for its failures than its successes, McCain was a ray of heroic sunshine. He withstood the type of torture and abuse that Gitmo waterboarding only hints at and managed to come back in more or less one piece. But McCain's had other disasters.

Shot Down While on the Ground

In 1967, while waiting for takeoff aboard the USS Forrestal, another aircraft accidentally fired a missile straight into MacCain's jet. The resulting fireball singed young John's ass and almost sunk the ship. Many sailors died and the ship suffered such heavy damage it had to return for repairs.

He bounced back - albeit to be shot down later in the war.

The Cheating Keating 5

Parleying his hero status into an election to Congress, McCain suffered a much less heroic fate as a member of the Keating Five. Many thought the five were political toast, but McCain pulled on his cockroach costume again. In an unusual move, he embraced the implications of the scandal and slept with strange bedfellow and uber-liberal Russ Finegold to produce the McCain-Finegold campaign finance reform bill. McCain-Finegold remains one of the few serious efforts at stemming the tsunami of money from special interests, but it's success is a little cloudy. If dirty money keeps rolling in at its current exponential rate, the entire US economy will be based on campaign financing by 2008.

He's bounced back again, just look at the reformed loot spilling out of his cockroach costume.

The Forked Tongue Express

In 2000, McCain hopped aboard Straight Talk Express I and toured the country bashing George Bush and giving genuinely funny interviews to Jon Stewart. For awhile, he was the darling of the Republican crowd. Then, he entered a string of dubious foot-in-mouth moments followed by an embarrassing "I love you maaaan!" hug for arch enemy Bush at the convention.

Since then, he's been busy pandering to anyone who'll listen and rehabilitating himself in a way that would make Nixon apologists proud. Straight Talk II is on the road again and he's singing the Don't Cut and Run blues to a catchy flip-flop backbeat. Still, he's not getting much traction against Mormon Mitt and America's Mayor so the vultures are gathering.

A Kafkaesque Metamorphosis

However, Snake-Bit John may still pull off a Kafkaesque metamorphosis. Mormon Mitt is having trouble keeping his stories straight - he's no doubt been drinking the evil stimulant coffee again - and America's Mayor has the most dysfunctional family since the Clintons, Carters, or Kennedys. Dragging Capo Kerik and his mob connections along, he's cementing the reputation of the Republicans as the biggest campaign incompetents around.

If and when those two go down, Cockroach John will be standing by, ready to drive the Forked Tongue Express into the White House garage. So, word to the vultures...

You might want to roost for awhile. Johnny Comeback may still get his meat into the freezer before it becomes spoiled road kill.