"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it. You know, I just do things."
                                                                            —the Joker in The Dark Knight

I wholeheartedly agree with Liz Emrich: the American Presidency is not a platform for heroics. Once government invokes the good vs. evil or crisis/hero narrative, we as a nation are in danger of sliding into a zone where reasoning is jettisoned and wild impulse trumps even calculated risk. The irony is that the Hero, agent of Order and Justice, will often become the agent of Chaos in the already messy situation called reality, reacting viscerally to each development with little regard for fallout. What's worse than a Hero? When Hero becomes Trickster.

This was all too evident by last night, in the aftermath of the "emergency bipartisan summit" fiasco. Take your pick of suitable pulp narratives: Wall Street as wild west gambling saloon or corrupt urban jungle, there has been no shortage of loose-cannon melodrama in the name of Restoring Order, none of it remotely constructive. First was Henry Paulson with his out-of-the-blue no-accountability bail-out plan, followed by Bush with his "there is even more to fear than fear itself" address, both trying to goad the nation into a state of malleable panic. None of this serves the nation as an anchor for morale or perspective. Entropy increases.

Enter John McCain. He "suspends" his campaign on the spur of the moment and sweeps into Washinton without a plan, lying his way out of an appearance on David Letterman's show and setting himself up for ridicule before a national audience, triggering Bush to call a pointless photo-op summit at the White House and throwing  both the bail-out negotiation timetable and the debate timetable into question. Perversely, he leaves the meeting having said barely a word. Meanwhile, his campaign tries to shelter running mate Sarah Palin from any meaningful and/or revealing dialog with the press, after having created the overnight Palin media sensation in the first place.

The political process in this country, like the economy, like our foreign policy, has become a series of bombshells and cliffhangers. History has been replaced by a narrative for short attention spans, akin to HBO, the Hollywood blockbuster cycle and the comic book. All that's missing are title cards and credit rolls. Punch-drunk pundits have scrambled to come up with metaphors to characterize tactics in the new zeitgeist : the hail-mary pass, shock-and-awe. But really, they need look no further than the latest Batman movie. The citizens of Gotham (and theater audiences) are held hostage by an endless series of diabolic and unpredictable events instigated by the Joker. Civic authorities and crusading heroes alike are drawn helplessly into the game, and everyone becomes a complicit victim. Wild cards everywhere as citizens and audience seek the stability of some kind of understanding.

Wild card running mates, political stunts, over-the-top lies and misinformation. Would it be harsh to call McCain's erratic behavior as a kind of low-grade terrorism? Perhaps. Certainly he could be accused of setting off bombshells and keeping us all in a state of exhaustion. But as a presidential candidate he should be providing a sense that there is at least a way out of the funhouse, and he is not. If his campaign is any indication of how he would run an administration (and there is no reason to believe it is not), we can genuinely fear for a lack of a sense of coherence in the next four years.We have here the evidence of a new strain of the Rove playbook, one that utilizes destabilizing distractions as well as tactical misinformation to deflect accountability. Could we perhaps call this friendly terrorism?

Incredibly, Barack Obama is still being stigmatized for exhibiting the exact opposite behavior. Patrick Healy of the New York Times asks, "In a time of crisis, is Obama too cool?" My favorite quote in his article is from a G. Terry Madonna, director for the Center of Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA., who says: “[People]  don’t want presidents who analyze and seem above it all... Obama still comes across as dispassionate to the point of coolness. He is so comfortable in his own skin, he can be hard to connect with for people who are struggling.”

You know what? I wish Madonna had spoken to me, because I do want a president who is comfortable in his own skin. Above all, I absolutely do want a president who analyzes.

I'll take the Zen President over the Trickster any time.