A Man With Bipolar Looks at McCain & Sees Himself

Posted on September 25, 2008 in Bipolar Disorder Campaign 2008 Psych Wards

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise….

This scene is all too familiar to me. There’s a guy who keeps acting out, throwing tantrums when things don’t go his way. He’s making erratic decisions. Grandiosity inflames his rhetoric. Jealousy upends his perspective. He denies the problems that everyone else sees, then suddenly reverses himself with a peculiar twist on reality. And the problem, as he sees it, is always the calmest, sweetest guy in the room.

This is group therapy at just about any psychiatric ward you can name. I know. I’ve been in them as a patient. Sometimes, when I haven’t been personally accountable for my behavior and not taken my meds, I have been that guy — over the top and through the woods. I’ve seen my share of others like him, some of whom were able to pass with a little denial from their friends. So pardon me if I take a moment to speak from my peculiar expertise in facing mental illness both in myself and in others: John McCain rattles me to my toes because he is the Republican candidate for president. Until the last few weeks, I thought him “spirited”. Now I think the American people should be demanding a psychiatric evaluation. He is all over the map and, not being a doctor, I can’t tell if the cure is Haldol or lithium or what.

The people around him make me feel crowded nose to wrinkled skin with the elephant in the living room. They try to say that he’s trying his hardest, just give him a chance. No one in the press, television, radio, or even blogs dares to suggest that John McCain’s behavior might be more than a Rovian maneuver — that he’s completely off base.

The strange doings of the last few days revolve around the man. They aren’t politics. They are bizarre, untethered, scary. I don’t know how to turn this into campaign strategy — it won’t go over well if we call McCain certifiable — but it can inform how we deal with him. And that means expect the unexpected and don’t lose it when he is losing his. So far Obama has shown that he keeps his head when everyone else is losing their’s. That’s worth making a point about. (Look up the Rudyard Kipling poem “If”.) And that may be what wins this election. So point out the behaviors and I believe the American people will put two and two together. But be careful. McCain has shoved women in wheelchairs. There’s no telling what he will do in the debates. He might make it personal.

Obama, just keep keeping your head while he is losing his.