Absence of fire douses McCain

In “The Abolition of Man,” C.S. Lewis admonishes against severing the visceral from the cerebral, which produces the phenomenon he calls “Men without Chests.” “We castrate and bid the geldings to be fruitful,” Lewis laments. So what to call one affected by the atrophy of both heart and mind? Perhaps the Republican ticket, the deficiencies of which may be on display, again, in tonight’s vice presidential debate.

Thirty-one days before Americans trudge to the polls to elect a president beneath huddled clouds of economic gloom, John McCain, the warrior in twilight, has stumbled once more into political existentialism’s arms. So the questions that clung to McCain seize hold anew after having loosened their grip a month ago in the wake of the Saddleback Forum and the gushers of ephemeral enthusiasm over the selection of Sarah McCain as his running mate.

He cherishes a vision of himself as a maverick swimming against the tide, but what tide? He seeks to unite, but what forces? He fancies himself an idealist, but what are his ideals? He pursues the presidency, but abandons the pursuit. Are we to believe, as he tells us, that the outcome of a bailout vote now is more important than the decision in November that will cover four years? Why cast for McCain if he does not covet the vote?

After slamming the brakes on a campaign that had slowed to a creep, McCain last week might have strode to the podium in the Mississippi presidential debate to promote Republicans’ call for sensibility in the bailout legislation rejected two days later in the House. He might have embraced an alternative to a bill disdained by the public for its $700-billion tax burden. Instead, he dithered, resuscitating mantra about slashing earmarks, a cause worthwhile but currently irrelevant.

McCain pounds fists against the establishment door, but fails now when it matters, as he long has when it did not, to light another path, to tell Americans where that might lead and why they should follow. Meanwhile, Palin flails beneath the shelter and tutelage of a campaign adrift.

She can see Russia from Alaska’s shores but what of that country’s threat as it arises from history’s ashes? Shielded from the assaults of a mainstream press inimical to her, Palin’s rare public forays indicate that McCain’s handlers have recognized a self-inflicted wound and are endeavoring to conceal it. Or is McCain’s philosophical intractability a poison that afflicts her, too?

Some answers should be evinced tonight in St. Louis. Democrat Joe Biden, whose propensity for flubs fascinates, can be expected to provide counterweight to Palin’s flaws. But if we do not soon get answers about who both Republican candidates are in the core of their thinking, McCain will wander back to the Senate wilderness while another crosses into the presidential promised land.

“It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out,” Lewis wrote of his “Men without Chests.” Absent from the McCain campaign is a stirring in the belly that might drive his chest to swell. And so Americans go searching for one possessed of the will to lead, even one whose experience lacks and whose allure is derived from smooth – rather than straight – talk and policies that tickle fancy while threatening to turn socialism’s seep into a flow.