My Concession Speech

by John McCain

Illustration by Don Haring jr.

My friends.

Before we get started, I do have a sad note: Bob Dole is in the hospital this evening. He's a dear and beloved colleague, like a kid brother, really, and our thoughts and prayers go out to him as he continues to struggle with priapism.

My friends — we're friends, right? Friends. Thank you. Thank you.

It has been a hard-fought campaign. Aboard the Straight Talk Express, and the Straight Talk Segway and wearing my houndstooth Straight Talk Pants, I have pandered and fear-mongered my way across this great nation. I have bedded down with a beer heiress in Canton and watched the sunrise with a frightening hockeymilf in Fayetteville. I have shaken hands with everyday Americans, people who are ready for change, and who are afraid that Barack Obama is a Jewish-Muslim socialist terrorist elitist. Some of which I repudiate with all my heart.

On my journey, I have met so many pro-America Americans, and I'm going to make them famous and you will know their middle names. Thank you, Joe the plumber, Jane the railroad tycoon and Gaston the sommelier. Thank you Monica, the Old Navy T-shirt folder for lending me this wireless mic, so I can pace this grandiose catwalk. And so permit me to lurch along back and forth before you now. [Grumble.]

BFFs, just moments ago, I got off the phone with Senator Obama —

[Pretend to be surprised by negative reaction from audience. Wave arms in half-hearted calming gesture.] Now, now. No need to boo or call for him to be killed. I repudiate that.

Yes, I spoke to Barack Hussein Grendel Pontius Pilate Obama on the telephone, and it was strange, for this phone was small and it had no visible wires or coils. And the buttons lit up. And I congratulated the senator for running a ... campaign. It's not easy to run a campaign, and he did, and I mean that.

[Smile weirdly.]

I offered my faint regret for the whole William Ayers thing and all the race-baiting shit I've been pulling over the last two years. I also expressed my regret at my lagging in these latest opinion poll numbers, the ones the media elite refer to as "votes."

I assured him that I was still really angry with him, but that I am always angry all the time, and that I would almost certainly level off into a discontented grumpiness one day, and then I'll be less angry with him.

But most importantly, my fellow prisoners, I informed Senator Obama that because of all the hardship faced by America today — the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the reinvigoration of al-Qaida, the deteriorating relations with Spain and other countries that don't like us very much, the leveling out of gas prices, the scandals with ACORN and Joe Blanton's hat, how crappy the new Watchmen trailer looks — I am suspending my campaign.

"That one," I said, "while you are going to be sitting around Washington doing politics as usual and making people hope for change, I am launching my own private war on terror, just like Rambo, who is a close personal friend of mine, if memory serves."

Friends, while my military record may adamantly say otherwise, trust me: I know how to win a war. I don't need on-the-job training when it comes to kicking ass. And I can't stress this enough: I know where Bin Laden is. So, carrying only a walking stick and a pouch full of Epsom salt, I'm going to hike alone into the unforgiving, mountainous border between Iraq, Pakistan and Vietnam, go to his cave and strangle him with my bare hands. With preconditions, of course. One of them being that we square off in a town hall setting.

And if he's not home, no biggie. I shall try the gates of hell and strangle him there.

And then, I will return victorious and ready to assume the presidency. My friends, we've got them just where we want them.

(j_mccain@citypaper.net)