America, You Sexy Bitch

Michael: This is stupid. I'm in an airplane flying across the country to go spend a month driving back across the country in an RV with Meghan McCain, a woman I barely know, with the vague purpose of "talking to people." About what? Politics, their lives, how they want the government to function, all of it with the idea that we will somehow gather enough material to write a book together and save the country. I mean, that is just pure stupid.

Meghan: The entire project, from idea to execution, happened in only a little over a month. Michael and I sold the book before we actually met in person. I know it may seem a little impulsive and extreme to agree to write a book with essentially a perfect stranger, but I have a tendency to be impulsive and make extreme decisions. I also believe in seizing the day and making the most of every single opportunity that ever crosses my path. One of the mantras I live by is Hunter S. Thompson's "Buy the ticket, take the ride." I am a Hunter S. Thompson groupie, and if this particular scenario didn't encompass seizing the day, then I don't know what does. Besides, it sounded like a lot of fun, and I love combining anything that includes politics and having fun.

Michael: Right after E! decided they didn't need my talk show hosting services, I was up late one night nursing the onset of an existential crisis. Swirling in my brain were the facts that I would be turning forty in a few months, I didn't have a steady income, I didn't know what I was doing with my life, and I had a family to support, with no immediate prospects for employment. When I am feeling like this, I have one friend I turn to for support: Ambien.

Meghan: When Michael first popped the question on Twitter, I thought that this project could be a significant endeavor—to try and showcase two entirely different perspectives and backgrounds in a civil and funny manner, while attempting to tackle the bigger-picture problems and issues currently facing this country. All of it was right up my alley and it was an easy decision to make. Attempting to fuse two different perspectives and worlds is pretty much what I spend my life attempting to do, so that's why I said yes so quickly.

Michael: So here I am, about a month later, crammed into a coach seat somewhere above the checkerboard squares of the American heartland. From up here, the country looks vast and peaceful. I cannot see any foreclosure notices, no methamphetamine labs. There aren't any televisions on this plane, so I can't watch Left screaming at Right on cable news. No Internet. No Drudge, no HuffPo. Just a plane full of passengers heading to the same destination. It's a decent, albeit shallow, metaphor for the way I'd like my country to be. The people on this plane probably have no more in common than anybody else. Or, I guess the more optimistic way to say it is that they have just as much in common as people everywhere: We're probably all American, or at least mostly American. We probably all love our families. We are probably all glad we're not still at LaGuardia, one of our nation's worst airports. Beyond that, I know that we share at least one important goal: first and foremost, we'd like the plane not to crash.

Meghan: As much as I consider myself a Republican and feel in almost every way intellectually and culturally tied to both the Republican Party as an organization and its many shadings of conservative theory, on paper I am in many ways "culturally liberal." I was born into a wealthy, famous family. I went to an Ivy League school and majored in art history, which means I know a lot about pretentious artists and art critics. I'm a writer and television commentator employed by "the liberal network" MSNBC. I am a huge supporter of and fighter for gay marriage and LGBT rights. I'm unmarried and not completely convinced that the idea of marriage isn't outdated. I am almost twenty-eight and I do not have children, and I think abstinence-only education is delusional and dangerous. I live in the heart of the West Village in New York City. I consider myself a God-fearing Christian, but I'm also a big believer in karma and sometimes get a feeling like I may have had past lives. All of that being said, Jesus and I came to an understanding of each other a long time ago and my relationship with him is one of acceptance. My God isn't Rick Santorum's God, and my God loves everyone for exactly who they are. My God does not make mistakes. This list can go on and on . . . which is why I have always hated labels and stereotypes about people, especially when it comes to Americans and what exactly it means to be a "real American" or come from "real America." Because if I were to adhere to all the stereotypical terms that make someone a "real American," I might find that, in many ways, I am falling desperately short.

Michael: My feelings of detachment from America changed when I dropped out of school to become Raphael, the silent and brooding Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. In the early nineties, the Ninja Turtles were the shit. Kids loved them, there were a couple movies out, and some enterprising capitalists thought the time was ripe for a touring stage show, kind of like Turtles on Ice without the ice.

Meghan: I have had a love affair with the Republican Party and its doctrines that began the first day I stepped foot on my father's presidential campaign. The majority of my twenties, and I expect the rest of my life, will be spent fighting for the soul of the Republican Party to be more accepting and big-tent oriented. I believe my life's purpose is to change things within the Republican Party, so that at some point it is not considered so controversial to live the kind of life I live and believe in smaller government at the same time. I have been handed a front-row seat to Republican politics, and as I have grown into the person that I am today, I have always felt a great responsibility to pass on my knowledge about politics, share my experiences, and try to bring a fresh perspective on a political party that, unfortunately, has not always been so warm and welcoming to new ideas. Republican politics is my entire life, and I love it. It is the blood that pumps through my veins. My mother was pregnant with me at the 1984 Reagan convention. Politics is quite literally the only world I have ever known and the only world I ever want to know. It is what gets me up in the morning and motivates what I do every single day. I continue to be exhilarated by the process and find joy attempting to help inspire a new way of thinking within Republican Party politics.

Michael: When Republicans make fun of liberal "elitism," they are absolutely right to do so. Liberals really do think they know better than everybody else. But the reverse is true, too, which is to say, Republicans have developed a kind of winking anti-intellectualism. You know, it's that whole "good ol' boy, just me, my dog, and my truck" that scoffs at fancy book learnin', and relies instead upon the common-sense homilies of country music singers and Joe the Plumber. It's just as phony and contrived as Democratic arugula-munching snobbery.

Meghan: The Republican Party has a long history of being for the "little guy"; it's just in the fast pace of the modern news cycle, hungry for red meat, that the message has been twisted and exaggerated to the point where the most extreme voices get the most attention. A lot of negative repercussions have occurred as a result of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. I think the biggest problem is that for anyone to get any real attention it feels like the message has to be an extreme one. The choice has come down to Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann. If in any way you are seen as compromising on either side, automatically the echo chamber considers you a turncoat and not "pure" enough of a liberal or a conservative. The news cycle makes people afraid to compromise, lest they be crucified for finding a middle ground. It's a really scary and dangerous political climate that the media and politicians have produced for the American public, and more often than not I myself have been caught in the crosshairs. Unfortunately, if you want to get any message across, it must be done in talking points and sound bites.

Michael: Democrats are supposed to be the party of the little guy. They're supposed to be interested in workers' rights, minorities, helping those with less achieve more. Pro-union, pro-choice, anti–machine gun. But over the last thirty years or so, it has started to feel more like the party of small, special interests. It feels old and faded and kind of crusty, like a pair of Walter Mondale's boxers. All the great causes feel played out. There just doesn't seem like anything for us Democrats to rally around. Honestly, who's going to burn their bra over the Glass-Steagall Act?

Meghan: Republican stereotypes sometimes hit the nail square on. We love to read, as long as it is either the Bible or a nonfiction account of a prominent party favorite, especially if it is a book about President Reagan (especially if it's about President and Mrs. Reagan). Over a dinner of perfectly grilled steak from a cow we knew by name and shot ourselves, and a potato that has been baked in the skin that God gave it, we love to dissect the latest entry to the Republican canon:

Michael: My own view heading into this trip is that America is at a particularly crappy time in its history. We feel like a nation adrift. To use the worst kind of corporate lingo, it seems like we have lost sight of our "mission statement." What is it we do now? Who are we? What is our purpose? The answers feel foggy these days. Something about freedom, I guess, and democracy, whatever that is, and helping people, I suppose, unless it's too expensive, in which case we all have to tighten our belts a little, unless we're rich, in which case we actually need to pay less taxes, and something about the huddled masses, except for Mexicans. Underneath it all there's this thing called the American Dream, and I'm not sure I know what that is either.