Flips and Fries

One of the greatest memories I have of St. Louis as a child is that the city had a McDonald's that floated on a mid-sized white and yellow showboat resting on the choppy Mississippi. It was larger than life and not something you would see everyday. In the shadow of the great Arch, there was a time when I honestly believed that boat was the true tourist destination by the River. Running down the hill and across the tiny footbridge to the boat it was a novelty only a child could love. My parents would follow along, obligingly place the happy meal in front of me and sit back. I would dig in.

But in the end, it was just a McDonald's. The burgers tasted the same and the fries were just as soggy.

And I learned I liked seeing the Arch more.

Governor Sarah Palin finds herself stuck in old St. Louis tonight. She is a novice politician with almost no experience in either thinking or speaking about national or international policy issues. Her recent soft media interviews have revealed a paranoid and easily flustered individual, a woman that appears to have no honest sense of self. We were told she had a fighting spirit. What we have witnessed is a dispiriting display of misguided fight.

And yet the weight of the potential presidency of her newfound best friend, Senator John McCain, rests heavily on Palin's shoulders tonight.

Only in America, my friends. Or only in the lower 48.

It is odd that a successful politician like McCain would take a risk like Palin. No matter how much he wants to be viewed as the Maverick, or wants to shake things up, there's way more than an element of insanity in the pick. Because with just a modicum of focus, any rational person would be able to sit down and look at Ms. Palin's history and quickly observe the basic reality of it all: Sarah Palin is the floating McDonald's.

The spectacle of her selection looked and sounded wildly interesting, at first. Everyone ran down the hill to see what it was all about. But after a moment, it was clearly the same product. Some are slower to admit the truth of that, and many never will. They like the gimmick. They don't see the harm. They're hopeless.

Palin's answers tonight will most definitely be warmed over talking points and political games engineered by the very awkward white men that have been running the Republican Party for years. The packaging will look, dare I say, prettier, but the ideas are the same. Only a child could continue to thrill at the superficial imagery of it all, once the ideas are known.

The Republicans surely thought, throughout the past year, that Barack Obama was the floating McDonald's. They derided the crowds and the excitement and the cash as mere childish excitement based on an image. But over the year it is evident Obama is not the flash on the water. Sorry Republican friends, but Obama is the Arch. He was new, he was unconventional. But he has worn well. He has taken hits and remained strong. He's become the institution. Obama's rise has always been based on more than just the surface.

After Gibson and Hannity and Couric, it is safe to assume it will take a minor miracle for Palin to show up tonight and demonstrate even a rudimentary level of mastery of her own person. It could happen. But in the end, even if the magic flip occurs, the mystery has already been dissolved. The showboat still serves up the same soggy grub.