KEY POINTS:
Okay, here's a thought: McCain wins.
If so amigos, let me prepare you; it will get ugly at my house.
In the wee hours, after the last ballot has long since been counted, you will find me facedown on the living room floor like a breaded fillet, moaning, arms outstretched toward the television, unable to move for days - just like in 2000 for Bush's win [3 days], and again in 2004 [when I was a stunned trout for an entire financial quarter].
Every dozen hours or so someone might notice my palm turn up slightly and you'd hear one of my kids yell, "Get the M&M's, she's moving!" with all the glee of watching a beached whale move out to open sea again.
That's if I survive it this time. If McCain wins, I don't think I'll make it. My grey matter will turn into pesto. I'd have to bequeath this column to someone who can slather me onto a slice of bread each week just to string sentences together like, "Must. Get. New Zealand. Citizenship."
Think of it. They would start manufacturing actual Caribou Barbie dolls of the Republican Vice President - the woman who cannot be named - at least not without air quotes in my house.
Have pity, because to contemplate actually losing those air quotes to reality is more than this columnist can take after eight years of Dick-Duck Cheney. We all have our own private definitions of terror now, don't we?
I've been an American in New Zealand through half the Bush years now, which really just means that much to my children's horror, I've resorted to wearing a Canadian Mountie's outfit most times I go out in public for safety reasons. Suspicious friends don't know that I think MMP really means "Maul McCain-Palin".
If McCain does pull this off, I don't want to have to arm my kids with tasers-again. I can just hear my son's fake Clint Eastwood voice on the playground as I've taught him, "I said get back - I'm from Toronto!"
The truth is, John McCain is no Sarah Palin. In fact, I feel the opposite. Of all the Republican candidates, McCain was both the most honourable and formidable of his primary opponents.
For 26 years he has successfully guided an enviable career in the Senate that deserves respect. It's just that I'm pretty sure somebody stole his actual brain and supplanted it with a super-juiced version of Rosie O'Donnell's.
Today the Senator most of America thought they knew has become a Presidential candidate voters can no longer recognise.
Where was the steadfast integrity of the old John McCain who vowed in his losing 2000 campaign to keep it clean enough so his daughter would be proud?
He knew firsthand how it felt to have mud flung in his face. In a now notoriously nasty 2000 South Carolina primary, Karl Rove's boys manufactured a racist rumour that McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter was really his illegitimate black child.
Here's where irony slips into tragedy. In a move that confounded even the most hard-bitten political cynics, John McCain chose to hire the very same operatives that slandered him in 2000.
These same men ultimately took the wheel to create what they felt McCain's somnolent campaign needed most - defining moments. They manufactured those all right.
Enter the "Air Quote" Vice Presidential candidate - you know, the one 60 per cent of Americans can't mention out loud today without significant stomach upset.
Here was a respected five star chef opening his new gourmet restaurant before the American people and McCain chose to dish up a hotdog.
We all could have forgiven one impetuous decision had others not followed suit in his ping-pong economic approach to the financial meltdown. Strategists convinced McCain to tack hard right, ignoring that the prevailing wind was blowing down the middle, as far away from Bush's hot air as possible.
McCain now has to be answerable to a campaign that has used its home stretch to spearhead a near racist push to make his opponent out to be a domestic-terrorist-loving, anti-American, secret-Muslim socialist with a weird-assed middle name. How could McCain have known that's what I call my husband in moments of passion?
Today, the most telling kickback of McCain's losing negative mantra is that in polls Obama leads in "hope and optimism" by a whopping 30 points. Obama's calm waters have trounced McCain's choppy seas in a time when Americans are calling out for a steady tiller.
I don't want to watch the last stand of a long, respected career go down in a defeat that is unworthy of him, but I will.
John McCain just hasn't tweaked that 300 million Americans aren't willing to borrow my now crusty Canadian Mountie's outfit for four more years. It's going on Trade Me on November 6, faster than you can say Obamanation.
* www.traceybarnett.co.nz
