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McCain Mentally Incompetent to be President
As my vast readership knows, I recently posted about McCain's moral shortcomings as a president. Now it has become glaringly obvious that his mental shortcomings are far worse than his moral shortcomings.
This leads me to ponder a hypothetical situation: Let's say one of the major parties nominates a person for their candidate for president who is obviously utterly senile, but is still extremely popular with voters. Is there any process by which that candidate can be forced out of the race?
Clearly, if the Democratic Party were the one nominating such a candidate the press would raise a huge outcry about the danger this candidate poses to America as well as to the world. That would prevent that candidate from winning a single state in the election - problem solved. But, if the Republican Party were the one nominating such a senile candidate the press would simply hide that information from voters. So, what can be done?....Uh, I mean in the theoretical situation, what could be done.
I can't see anything in the Constitution that would cover this, probably because the founding fathers couldn't even conceive of an American group nominating for president an utterly incompetent candidate, and even more so, they couldn't conceive of the "free press" being complicit in trying to foist such a candidate off on the nation. But, of course, the Republican Party and today's "free press" didn't exist at that time in our history.
Comments (4)
I wouldn't necessarily call him senile. But mentally unfit? Yes!
Unfit! Unfit! Unfit!
In every way.
September 11, 2008 11:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Really, the way to do it would be to ease him out with sympathy: McCain suffered terribly at the hands of the North Vietnamese, he was damaged physically, psychologically, and emotionally. He has been so damaged by his suffering that he is clearly not up to a job as stressful and demanding as President.
'Course, then we're looking at Crazy Sarah. Party rules and all that...
September 12, 2008 12:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
You can't win an election by showing sympathy for your opponent. Kerry and Gore tried that, and look how far it got them. Since the MSM taking heads are not going to mention McCain's obvious deterioration, preferring to claim that his staff is doing all of the dirty stuff, the only ones who can mention it are other reporters, pundits, letter to the editor writers, bloggers, etc. But, for him to seriously claim that Ste Palin is America's premier energy expert is so far out that only a deranged mind would come up with that.
September 12, 2008 1:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't believe it's ever been disputed and Howard Baker himself may have actually talked about it, but as he was transitioning into the job as Reagan's Chief of Staff, he was reportedly told that he should be prepared to invoke the 25th admendment. And, again based on media reports and a biography or two, plus my memory, Baker decided that everyone should watch the President for one day and if he stayed with it, they'd just forget about the situation.
Also, I'm pretty sure that I've read somewhere recently that some in the administration had considered advising Reagan not to seek re-election in '84, but they couldn't find another candidate that was assured of a win.
September 12, 2008 4:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
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