David Letterman described him as: ‘the guy at the hardware store who makes the keys’, and: ‘that guy who can’t stop talking about how well his tomatoes are doing’, when John McCain appeared on the Late Show recently. Perhaps it was a reference to his winning man’s man, guy of the people qualities. Or maybe it simply alluded to the relative anonymity the mighty Hillary vs. Obama shadow has cast upon the potential future president of the USA. We know he’s a republican. We know he’s a war veteran. We know it’s him, Barack or Hillary. And…for most of us, it stops there.

Amid Clinton’s tears and ‘fatigue induced’ slipups, Obama’s Black Eyed Peas flavored calls for change, and the shining republican legacy of Bush, it’s easy to dismiss McCain as an easy loss. But, shock horror, what if he actually won? McCain is a republican yes, but is something of a contradictory one. It’s been said that he’s a conservative, but he’s not traditionally conservative. He supports stem cell research but advocates capital punishment. He’s proposed shutting down Guantanamo Bay but campaigns strongly for increasing the size of the military. He rejects government involvement in healthcare, but favors allowing each state to create their own definition of marriage. He’s a corn fed all American man with a shiny blonde wife and two shiny blonde kids...and an adopted Bangladeshi daughter.

Understandable then, is the strife he’s created within his party-hard-line conservatives have painted him as a sellout democrat in disguise. It seems like he’s caught the anti-Bush vibe floating around and is presenting his more liberal policies in a bid to court moderates and cross over democrats. Clever policy, sure, but this leaves him open to party faction fights and a responsive republican exodus. Something of a vicious cycle.

On the flip side of course, is the possibility that his tactics could work and America could find itself stuck firmly to the republican wave it’s been riding for the past eight years. And, as we know, what affects America affects the world. As for climate change, while he’s vowed to fight it, his website’s stance on the environment makes no official mention of it outside of sweeping calls for environmental ‘stewardship’. In terms of foreign policy, supposedly the major difference between McCain and Bush would be a shift from America-Centrism to a more international approach, working closer with Europe and key democracies throughout the world like Turkey, India and Israel. And the war in Iraq of course is still firmly on the agenda.

Unfortunately, as we know, US politics is a global concern. So to be beguiled by Obama-Hillary vision and let the next potential president slip through the radar would be nothing short of dangerous. So maybe, in the lead up to November, it’s worth paying a little more attention to McCain and his tomatoes.