A person's sense of humour can tell us a great deal about his or her character—the kind of person he or she is. It unwittingly reveals what lurks deep within his or her unconscious, in much the same way that slips of the tongue (so-called "Freudian slips") do. John McCain's humour is no exception.
A prime example of McCain's crude attempt at humour is his parody of the Beach Boys' song "Barbara Ann." In front of a live audience of thousands (counting those watching on TV), he sang (or at least tried to sing): "Bomb, bomb, bomb; Bomb, bomb Iran." It has to be admitted that as far as song parodies go, this is "clever" is a sophomoric sort of way—but hardly the sort of thing you would expect from a presidential candidate. It is more in the league of schoolboy parodies of "Happy Birthday" and "On Top of Old Smokey"—extremely low-brow. But quite apart from that, the fact that he should find the bombing of Iran funny (and a subject to joke about) says a great deal about the kind of president he would make. This is no trigger-happy cowboy, like the present incumbent! No, this is man with a great deal of repressed rage, which, though well concealed (because it is so deeply repressed), bubbles up to the surface unbidden, every now and then, in unguarded moments, in the sublimated form of (among other things) silly and seemingly "harmless" parodies and jokes. What we spontaneously joke about we take the most seriously; only, we cannot admit to ourselves consciously that we take it seriously, so we joke about it in an attempt to convince ourselves that we don't really take it seriously. (Ever noticed how the straight men who are the loudest in telling jokes about gays are the ones who are least willing to come to terms with their own homosexual tendencies?) If McCain jokes about bombing Iran, he is doing it entirely for his own sake, and he is fooling no one but himself in the process.
Another of McCain's pathetic attempts at humour was his offhanded remark about how he would define the middle class. With his typical affectation of nonchalance, he tossed of the figure—"five million a year." Since he was not prepared for the question, we can assume that what he said was the first thing that came to his mind. This is somewhat like the word association experiments that psychologists do to assess a person's psychological status: they give the person a word and the person is supposed to say the first word that comes to his or her mind. Once again, McCain's response reaches into the depths of his unconscious. And it suggests that in his unconscious he lives in a fantasy world in which the people are all multimillionaires and own so many homes that they cannot keep track of how many. But setting that aside, the fact that his first instinct was to joke about such a matter is itself telling: he had not given the issue any serious thought prior to being asked the question (though as a presidential candidate he should have), and his immediate and spontaneous reaction was to make light of it (such is the estimation in which he holds the nation's economy). And even when he forced himself to take the matter seriously after the initial impulse to joke about it, he fumbled with his response and his answer was not altogether satisfactory.
Hyperbole is often an effective tool in the humourist's arsenal, and John McCain uses it all too freely—albeit (once again) unconsciously. He once bragged about being willing to follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell. A nice line—but, as Barack Obama pointed out, in seven years and more, we haven't even got as far as the caves of Tora Bora—a far cry from the gates of Hell. So McCain's braggadocio in connection with the gates of Hell is really just a lot of empty rhetoric with no basis in reality. If for seven years bin Laden has eluded what is supposedly the "most powerful nation on earth," with the world's best resources at its command, he is quite capable of eluding it for the next seven and more. My guess is the McCain will be dead by the time bin Laden gets to the gates of Hell, so his hyperbole rings hollow. But the most telling of McCain's hyperbolic utterances is the declaration of his determination to win the war in Iraq even if it takes a hundred years. Fine rhetoric, but does it show good judgement politically, given that most Americans are tired of the war and want it to end as soon as possible and the troops to come home? Is this the sort of thing to be hyperbolic about, especially during a presidential campaign? Hardly! McCain is said to have a great love of literature, and must surely have come across Shakespeare's oft-quoted line, "Discretion is the better part of valour." Whatever the case, it is quite evident that McCain does not subscribe to this view. His "hundred year" hyperbole (we will not hold him to it literally) tells us that at a very fundamental level he sees life in the simplistic terms of winning and losing and that his unconscious attitude to life is that of winning at all costs. As a veteran of the Vietnam War, he should know only too well that there sometimes comes a point at which discretion tells us that it is time to stop fighting because the war is unwinnable. One can of course declare victory and go home, even if one has not won, as the US did in Vietnam. But leave it they did, and without winning a victory—or anything even vaguely resembling a victory—and certainly not after a hundred years, hyperbolic or otherwise. Valour carried beyond the point of discretion is nothing more than cheap bravado. And no amount of bravado in Vietnam could hide the fact that when the US finally pulled out, it had its tail firmly between its legs. It is difficult to walk in a dignified manner with one's tail between one's legs, but McCain appears not to have learned his lesson. His show of determination to win the Iraq War ("determination" being a more charitable way of saying "bravado") and his resorting to the unfortunate hyperbole of a hundred-year stay in that country indicates an unwillingness on his part to entertain the possibility that the war in Iraq might just be unwinnable. Such closed-mindedness (a more charitable way of saying "pig-headedness") amounts to a character defect, one that is certainly highly undesirable in a president. It is precisely such "pig-headedness" that got the US in to the Iraq War in the first place. So McCain's unconscious hyperbole about the war in Iraq makes him not much different (at least in this respect) from the swaggering, trigger-happy, "shoot-first-think-later" cowboy who currently occupies the White House. At the most fundamental level, "a-hundred-years-in-Iraq" is not much different from "bring-'em-on": both are examples of garish and tawdry bravado. Both are equally pathetic cover-ups for deep-seated insecurity. It is only the insecure who resort to belligerence and are obsessed with winning at all costs. Those who are slightly more well-adjusted know and respect their own limitations and are willing to accept "defeat" with grace and dignity. It is the insecure who take refuge in bluster.
The late Ann Richards will long be remembered (fondly) as the creator of that wonderful expression in reference to George H. W. Bush: "He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." Of John McCain, with his bumbling, blundering, bungling attempts at humour, it might be said: "He was born with a silver club foot in his mouth." This does not have quite the same ring and flair as Ann Richards' sparkling line, but it accurately describes the careless, unthinking, irresponsible way in which McCain has joked his way through the 2008 presidential campaign so far. The Republicans take great pleasure is saying that Joe Biden suffers from "foot-in-mouth disease"—and there may well be a tiny sliver of justification in that calumny. But Biden's gaffes are always well-meaning: they just come across in the wrong way or in a way that might be misconstrued. McCain's humour, on the other hand, is peverse, vicious, with a nasty edge to it. It has a scorpion's sting. And it tells us a great deal about the man.
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