An Alternative Theory On McCain's Electoral Defeat

Consider the following:

1. One day, while sitting in his A-4 on the USS Forrestal, minding his own business, a missile was accidentally fired into John McCain's aircraft from another plane sitting on the deck. Though McCain escaped with his life, resulting secondary explosions caused the largest loss of life at sea since World War II.


2. When McCain recovered from his Forrestal injuries, it was only a few missions later when he was shot down over Hanoi.


3. Because he was an admiral's son (and grandson) and refused to cooperate with the North Vietnamese, he was singled out for exceptionally harsh torture.


4. In 2000, McCain's first presidential campaign foundered on an exceptionally well-run and exceptionally vicious rumor campaign sabotaged his chances in South Carolina. The competence of that campaign was almost certainly the result of an accident of fate: anybody other than Carl Rove wouldn't have been nearly as effective in torpedoing McCain.


5. Finally, after surging ahead in the polls, McCain became the first candidate in US history to fall victim to a massive financial crisis only six weeks before the general election.

Now, consider these facts as well:

1. Barack Obama won his Illinois state Senate seat when a routine ballot-qualification attempt against his opponents actually succeeded, allowing him to run for the seat unopposed.


2. When Obama decided to run for the US Senate, his opponent fell victim to possibly the juiciest sex scandal, involving him coercing his wife, a well-known Borg at the time, into attending sex clubs with him. Again, Obama ran virtually unopposed. (I don't count Alan Keyes as opposition.)


3. It just so happens that Obama arrives on the national scene at just the right time to make a terrific speech at one convention, then becomes a junior Senator at just the right time to capitalize on growing national disgust for all things Republican. Having no record that could be used against him, he is able to bootstrap a successful presidential campaign.


4. With his numbers sharply declining and only eight weeks left in the campaign, Obama becomes the beneficiary of the same financial crisis that wreaks havoc with the McCain campaign.

I've gone on at great length about Obama's many talents and McCain's obvious deficiencies, but maybe the reason the election turned out the way it did is simpler to explain than that: McCain is the unluckiest man in the world, and Obama is the luckiest.