What would you have added to the McCain cartoon to clearly represent the "politics of fear"?

The whole point of the New Yorker cover is that it was making fun of misconceptions about Barack Obama. Nothing in the entire picture was supposed to be taken seriously, though that certainly didn't stop people from trying. The people being mocked were the ones who believed any of the ridiculous rumors being depicted.

The VF cover, unfortunately, is quite the opposite. It portrays things that are either objectively true (McCain is in fact old) or are subjective claims that are genuinely held by many people (McCain has been trampling the Constitution.) The pill thing is just plain mean--how can we be sure that they're meant for John and not Cindy?

But I don't think that the VF cartoon would have been called "politics of fear", because (unlike the NYer cartoon) the focus of the VF cartoon is personal (McCain's age, Cindy's drug history; the 'political' stuff is not the focus -- and to me it looks like she's holding those pill close to herself...if she was offering them to McCain, her arm would have been positioned differently).  The VF cartoon would be called "The Politics of Personal Destruction."

If the cover was to mock the Obama cover, it would needed to be an exaggerated of the arguments against McCain.  I would have included a map room showing that McCain plans to bomb the world (map should be solidly covered with pins), he could have been shown older like the crpyt keeper, he and Bush in bed (shaped like a tank type child's bed with camo blankets) together, in the oval office surrounded by lobbyists with pockets stuffed with money while the huddled masses are homeless in the gutter and thin from starving, needed some untruths (his adopted child) etc.

Cindy McCain did have a love affair with pills (even though in the cartoon the pills she is holding are for her husband)

I wonder if the irony that this cartoon is actually based on TRUTH will be lost on Mccain.

Instead of the Obamas, put the McCains in these trappings. Think about it for a minute. John McCain in ceremonial Muslim garb with the U.S. flag burning in the fireplace and Osama bin-Laden's portrait over the mantlepiece. (I'd put a portrait of Ahmadinejad next to it, given McCain's incredibly stupid statement to the effect that al-Qaeda and Iran are allied.) He fist-bumps with Cindy McCain, all done up like Patty Hearst in her Symbionese Liberation Army days. Hey, they're both heiresses. And the whole thing would fit in with the right-wing tendency to project their own negative attributes onto their political opponents.

You can read the whole post here.

I would have a picture of mushroom clouds over Iran on and America on a TV in an Oval office where McCain in the middle of getting it on with a blonde lobbyist and having a heart attack and dying.  All while some crazy evangleical gets ready to take office.