Is John McCain the Axl Rose of American Politics? The Great Debate vs. Chinese Democracy
Discuss
September 26, 10:53 PM
by Dominic Patten, Pop Culture Examiner

It's hard to tell what's really been of greater anticipation. This debate that took place tonight between Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain or the latest buzz on the anticipated release of the new Guns'n'Roses' album Chinese Democracy?

No one landed a TKO tonight in the debate, but, like Axl Rose stalking the stage with his band of hired hands, timing, John McCain was the one you couldn't stop watching and, at least from the number of times Senator Obama said he "agreed with Senator McCain," listening to. The debate, like the 13 years in the making album, was on, was off, was on the shelf, was back and is on in the middle of a hurricane of a media circus.

Today, after saying two days ago that he wasn't going to participate in the debate because handling the $700 billion economic bailout package back in Washington D.C. John McCain announced he would show up after all in Oxford, Mississippi. In the past few weeks, Axl Rose, who has reportedly spent over $13 million on Chinese Democracy, has alowed one of the tunes off the perpetually teased out album to be included on the just released video game Rock Band 2. If "Shackler's Revenge" wasn't enough, now it turns out another new tune "If The World" will play over the closing credits of the new Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio flick Body of Lies, which is coming out on October 31.

If McCain has been running on his reputation as a straight talker and on his heroic history as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War, Axl, who hasn't released an album of new material since 1991, has been doing the same off the rebellion and riotous past of GNR.

The thing is McCain, who has, like Axl did after all the other original members of GNR had left, added a few new players to the GOP band by bringing Gov. Sarah Palin to the national stage as his running mate, like Axl is stuck in his own past.

And, as the late David Foster Wallace made clear in the coverage he did for Rolling Stone in 2000, and has posthumously been reprinted in the just released book McCain's Promise, the Senator from Arizona is not the man he was and could have been. In 2000, if he hadn't been beated with dirty tricks by Texas Gov. George W. Bush for the Republican nomination, McCain would have been a formidable opponent and probably would have soundedly defeated, unlike Bush, then Veep Al Gore. If that had been our recent history, John McCain wouldn't be scrapping it out with one twitchy gimmick after another for the Presidency, as he is in the debate right now, but winding up his second term and getting ready to be leaving the White House.

If Axl Rose had released Chinese Democracy in 1996, two years after he started work on it, he would be likley be viewed on the high innovative level of a David Bowie or Brian Eno. Instead Axl has been twitching the dials in the studio, firing, hiring and firing band member and producers - like McCain used to fire, hire and fire again his campaign staff. McCain rightly wants to hunt Osama Bin Laden to the Gates of Hell, Axl wants to hunt online leakers, like Kevin Cogill who put some trackers up on his blog on June 18, 2008, to at least the far end of the San Monica Pier and federal prision. Failing that if GNR's 2002 return tour hadn't turned into a lot of unsold tickets and eventually cancellation, Axl could have given a slap to his former bandmates guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan and their soon to be new band Velvet Revolver and come out as the rock king he still thinks he is. Instead, as widespread critical response to "Shackler's Revenge" has been, he is stuck, like John McCain is, 1999.

The latest rumor is that Axl has been chatting with Best Buy for an exclusive retail deal, similar to what The Eagles did with Wal-Mart and their Long Road Out of Eden last year, to sell Chinese Democracy and that it might, in a long list of release dates, be finally coming out on November 25. Perhaps this is his Sarah Palin tactic to get people excited about him as McCain did bring by bringing the Alaska Governor on board. And perhaps, like Palin joining the GOP ticket, it will fizzle out after a week or so.

Former Skid Row frontman and B-Team rockstar Sebastian Bach, who is close to Axl the way B-Team Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is to McCain, has said that Chinese Democracy is but the first in a trilogy of albums that GNR plan to release. The next one is expected in 2012, oddly the same year a President McCain would be running for re-election.

The thing is some might say that John McCain, the man who brilliantly introduced the term "gateway drug" into a Presidential debate tonight in reference to Congressional spending habits, might be a man who would have been a great President in 2001 but is out of touch and beyond his prime right now. They might say that but right now McCain's showing Senator Obama how it's done on stage at the University of Mississippi right now. Obama - like the poseurs of Buckcherrys, whatever Velvet Revolver turns into now singer Scott Weiland has gone back to his old band Stone Temple Pilots has left, and others - is trying to do a good impression of the John McCain of 2000, but it doesn't have the same powerchords. John McCain tells a story about a wristband he wears in honor of an American solider who was killed in Iraq, Barack Obama jumps in with his own wristband story and tries to hit McCain with foreign policy shortcomings. John McCain says one thing and Barack Obama follows.

Like Axl Rose, John McCain is a legend in the mind of many. Like Axl Rose, John McCain is a maverick who seems to run with his own unique gamebook and by his own rules. Like Axl Rose, John McCain has been around a long long time and might not have the brass knuckles he used to - but I gotta tell ya, that's not what I'm seeing in this debate.

What I'm seeing, and I've been very critical of John McCain during this election, is a so called has been and spoiler controlling the agenda of this debate tonight. He's landing the punches on foriegn policy, which is the theme of tonight's debate, and economic policy, which is the primary theme of the news this week. and keeping everyone on their toes. Chinese Democracy, like the actual notion in the world's most populous nation, might never come, but I think they are going to be cranking up Paradise City tonight on the Straight Talk Express, cause one hour in the old guy, who acted like an over indulged rockstar when he dropped out of the debate earlier this week, is showing the young punk who insists he is the future, how it's done...and McCain doesn't even have a seal yet.

Maybe President John McCain will ask Axl and Guns'n'Roses to play at his inauguration? Barack Obama might be the first hip hop President, but John McCain, with Vice-President Palin by his side, may turn out to be the first heavy metal President.

Turn it up to 11!