"Explosion without an objective is politics in its purest form."
-- Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

It was said of George H.W. Bush that he was born on third base but thought he had hit a triple. We could say that John McCain takes himself for Roy Rogers but is really Gabby Hayes. (We realize this reference is lost on the addled youth.) By contrast, Senator McCain has compared Barack Obama to William Jennings Bryan, alas another figure all but lost to young denizens of the Internet.

McCain understands Bryan as a great speaker bereft of substance. Of course, all familiar with Senator McCain know that when it comes to the content of policy, as a Wall Street Journal profile once put it, "he gets lost in the tall mangroves."

It has nothing to do with his age. Let's face it, he was 894 in a class of 899. Come on. He had a career as a flack for a beer company, until marrying into money.

By contrast, as many of you know, I built my own wife, the beautiful Maria, shown below. Talk about your buns of steel. Subsequent advances in the science of polymers have made possible exciting upgrades that must remain confidential. Maria is very modest and shoots lethal laser beams from her eyes.

So was Bryan an empty suit with a powerful voice? Hardly. On fundamental issues he was ahead of his time. First and foremost was anti-imperialism. Like many others, he recognized the folly of U.S. entanglement in the first world war, a war whose aftermath laid the foundation for the horrors of Nazism.

We have been regaled with the cruel use of "human shields" by Saddam Hussein and assorted terrorist enemies of the U.S. A pioneer in the use of human shields was President Woodrow Wilson, who permitted the luxury liner The Lusitania, laden with rich Americans and a hidden cargo of munitions for the British war effort, to run a German U-boat blockade of Great Britain. 1,198 died, setting off a 9-11-scale outrage in 1915 U.S.A., then U.S. entry into the war.

When imperial powers set out to make war, they first offer up targets to those they plan to attack. It was ever thus. I am not talking about the WTC. I am talking about Iraq. Aggression explains approximately half of the current, pointless U.S. occupation. U.S. soldiers are being offered up to those who can be identified as Iranian proxies.

The reason is not to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Nuclear weapons in its hands would have little utility. Any use against Israel or U.S. allies would invite massive retaliation. No, the problem with Iran (as with Saddam's Iraq) is its burgeoning, oil-based economic, political, and conventional military power in the region. Such temerity challenges the imperial monopoly of the U.S., for which military dominance of the Middle East is a fundamental strategic interest. That's why the "Empire of Bases" is being expanded in Iraq, with 60 planned facilities, no doubt built to last, say, a hundred years.

It happens that this commitment is fiscally unsustainable. The defense budget now exceeds spending for Social Security. Yet we get inane, ignorant exhortations to save the youth of America from social insurance that would protect them and their dependents in old age, disability, and death. Where is the Concord Coalition when you need them? When will the Fiscal Wake-Up Tour wake up?

Bryan was not reticent on the subject of imperialism. He actually resigned his post as Secretary of State in protest of the Wilsonians' rush to war. The last righteous resignation at this level in the U.S. was no more recent than 1980, not coincidentally over another foreign policy fiasco in Iran.

Barack Obama might well aspire to William Jennings Bryan's command of George Washington's exhortation to steer clear of foreign entanglements. He teases us with a hint of the inclination to think anew, diagnosing the U.S. misadventure in Iraq as the product of a defective "mindset." Exactly what is this mindset?

It appears to be characterized by the willingness to shoot first and ask questions later. Kill 'em all and let God sort it out. It is typified by the McMindless McCain's mantra of "We will never surrender" in the face of any rational discourse. What President Lyndon Johnson said about Barry Goldwater, before he escalated the Vietnam War.

Perhaps Obama's implication is that the U.S. must work harder at making friends, exhaust diplomatic options, conduct a democratic debate aimed at creating a national consensus, and rebuild international alliances, before committing to the use of force. In other words, have we here a difference over strategy or mere procedure?

The question: will President Obama's objectives be identical to McCain's? Is he committed to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons? Will he allow the U.S. to become mired in Iraq on ostensible humanitarian grounds, to prevent the proverbial bloodbath? Does he support Israel's assaults on Southern Lebanon and Gaza, or indulge its continuing construction of illegal settlements on the West Bank? Will he prop up fundamentalist, reactionary Islamic dictators? Maintain hundreds of military bases around the world?

If President Obama's objectives are the same as McCain's, his means to those objectives will tend to converge to those of his predecessors. So too will the results.

Not incidentally, he will launch a new and improved anti-war movement.