U.S. election 2008: an attempt to lay out (selected) facts. Part 1: John McCain
Oct 17 '08 (Updated Oct 21 '08)
The Bottom Line I've spent more time learning about John McCain than I can justify. But at least I can write it and you can share what you know. Sound good?
I started a McCain/ Obama election essay almost by accident in the comment section of a fellow Epinionator. So what the hey: I might as well post some real ones before my wife pops out child #2. Which might be within hours for all I know, a fact which in turn is enough to overcome my crippling perfectionism as a writer: I'm just gonna lay some stuff out here. I shall attempt to write only facts (listing a variety of URLs as my first Comment since Epinions does not allow hyperlinks). But in a world full of facts to choose from, I should first tell you, quickly and bluntly, my biases.
1) I am a political junkie who majored in economics in a right-wing (Republican/Libertarian) program, and minored in psychology and anthropology from professors who I think were almost entirely liberal Democrats.
2) I'm a liberal, and several of the sites I read are liberal, but
2A) I read sites like Obsidian Wings and Reality-Based Community and the Daily Howler -- liberal sites that nonetheless shoot down liberal-biased news stories if they don't fit reality, even if I'd liked those stories -- while
2B) I ignore partisan cheerleaders like the Daily Kos or the Huffington Post and
2C) I regularly read the American Conservative magazine, the right-wing websites of Daniel Larison and Ross Douthat, and the libertarian sites Marginal Revolution and Unqualified Offerings. In other words, I have no interest in just being told "You're right again, Brian!" over and over (although it's fun sometimes, so please feel free). I like learning things, and I prefer that some of them be inconvenient.
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It's worth establishing that because as you will notice, in this essay I present several times more negative than positive information about John McCain, and if I get a chance, a second essay will have a similar ratio regarding Sarah Palin. (The Obama and Biden stuff is planned as a possible third piece; it will pretty even-handed, but probably lean favorable.)
I completely understand if the imbalance bothers you. You may like McCain and Palin a lot, based on what you know, and even if you don't like them yourself, you have a right to be suspicious of such strong feelings. _Do_ be suspicious of my value judgments: please.
But I've gone far out of my way to be careful of the truth of the facts I present herein. Again: I list my sources below as the first Comment to this essay, for your examination. You probably don't know half the stuff I'm going to present here (seriously, why would you have bothered? why did I bother?). I offer you the chance to know, to care, and to let it affect your vote and those of anyone you talk about this stuff with. At worst, it can't hurt you to see what I've got. Right?
Comments, pro- and con-, are welcome; I will reply when I have time, and given that I'm an argumentative cuss, I may make time sooner than my family might prefer. :-)
John McCain
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Things I DO LIKE about him, in chronological order:
* He was a prisoner of war 40 years ago, and refused to be released early as a North Vietnamese publicity stunt; he endured five unpleasant years. I'm quite certain I couldn't have done that.
* He helped to pass the McCain-Feingold Act, an overrated and flawed but still worthwhile campaign-finance reform act.
* He opposes corn ethanol programs -- an environmentally bad, food-shortage-causing alternative fuel program -- even though this has guaranteed that he would do poorly in the Iowa Caucuses both times he's run for president.
* He refuses to collect federal spending "earmarks" for Arizona, even though Arizona voters would reward him for collecting earmarks -- a minor but useful and apparently sincere crusade.
* His attempted Immigration Reform bill of 2006 was, in my opinion, a pretty good compromise bill, one that deserved to convince both the right and the left that it had, from their own perspectives, more good points than bad.
* Despite being a Republican, he gives lip service to the idea that Americans should not torture, and lip service from a leading politician does matter.
* Despite being a Republican, he gives lip service to the need to combat global warming, and lip service from a leading politician does matter.
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Things I DON'T LIKE about him, in chronological order, which means the objectively important stuff comes later. I probably shouldn't even mention the early stuff, but it genuinely bothers me:
* Despite his father and grandfather being Admirals in the Navy, John McCain was a well-known goof-off who graduated 894th in an officer class of 899, which basically means the teachers didn't feel allowed to fail him.
* As a P.O.W. he did, as his own book tells us, eventually write a long confession of the evils of the United States, a confession broadcast widely as Vietcong propaganda, in order that he would get better treatment from his captors. Now hold on: I'd've done the same a lot faster, because I'm a wuss when it comes to physical pain. It _does not_ bother me that he did this. It bothers me that McCain, having done that, now uses his P.O.W. experience as proof of his absolute virtue and sacrifice for his country, and in turn as proof that he'd make a great leader. Some P.O.W.'s never agreed to speak ill of America. Why am I supposed to vote for McCain instead of them? No, seriously: I'm not being snarky, I want to know.
* On returning to the United States, McCain became a serial adulterer and eventually abandoned his wife and child, marrying a hundred-million-dollar heiress. Bill Clinton did some of that, but he stuck with Hillary and Chelsea, which to me matters.
* In 1983, McCain voted against the creation of Martin Luther King Day, and in 1987 he supported Arizona's refusal to honor it.
* McCain first became famous in 1988 for illegal wrongdoing, as one of the Keating Five. Having received large amounts of money (campaign contributions) from Charles Keating, McCain intervened to keep Keating's bank fraud and racketeering activities from punishment by regulators. Taxpayers spent $3.4 billion bailing Keating's duped investors out. Indeed, McCain first became beloved of the D.C. press corps by apologizing at length for his ethical lapse ... but in pattern he's repeated regularly, he apologized _after_ he'd been caught and _after_ the investigation was complete.
* McCain spent the 1990s compiling one of the most predictably right-wing, anti-environmental voting records in the entire U.S. Senate, sometimes netting a 0% rating from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action. Even if you approve of that voting record, it sits poorly with his "maverick" image.... poorly enough that the "maverick" line looks kind of like a scam.
* During the 2000 campaign, when the media fell all over itself praising McCain's "Straight-Talk Express", McCain regularly flip-flopped on the abortion issue depending on his audience, consistently misstated his own tax plan, and proclaimed the greatness of the Confederate flag until right _after_ the South Carolina primary, at which point he -- yep -- apologized.
* During the 2000 campaign, McCain openly admitted in a (videotaped) interview, with a charming smile, "I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign matters. I still need to be educated". In 2008, after fully eight years of available study time, while again seeking to lead the most powerful nation on earth, he made the same (videotaped) confession with the same charming smile.
* In 2002 and 2003, McCain promised that the war in Iraq would be a short and easy one, because the United States soldiers would be greeted as liberators.
* In 2005, McCain voted for Lindsay Graham's bill to strip war prisoners of legal rights. Let's be clear: McCain spent five years as a prisoner of war, charged with crimes he did not commit but was not allowed to challenge in court. McCain has regularly voted to do the same to the prisoners we capture, many of them as innocent as he. This is when I lost all respect for him.
* In 2006, McCain voted for the Military Commissions Act, which exempted the U.S. from the Geneva Convention on Human Rights, granted the president the right to decide what torture is (this is _after_ Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were well-known), and denied prisoners the chance at a fair trial (this is after the U.S. had been unwilling or unable to even bring charges against hundreds of captives, at least half of whom are thought by our own intelligence agencies to be completely innocent).
* In February 2008, he voted for a bill insisting that waterboarding is not torture, despite the fact that every American I've read who's volunteered to be waterboarded (at least three, none of them liberals) has insisted that it was the most terrifying, unpleasant thing they'd ever encountered.
* McCain has a consistent record over the years of opposing veteran's benefits, including the expanded G.I. Bill that Barack Obama (among others) helped push into law. Yes, seriously: my notes include an article that links the role-call votes, and I've looked at the votes myself. McCain, recall, was the son of an admiral: he never personally needed veteran's benefits. Which is not an excuse.
* During the 2008 campaign, McCain has flip-flopped once or more on: the legality of Bush's wiretapping program. Warmer relations with Cuba. Diplomacy with Hamas and Syria (yes, he supported it for awhile). Privatizing Social Security. Abortion rights. A cigarette-tax-and-regulation bill that he himself co-sponsored and now opposes. Gay marriage. The teaching of "Intelligent Design". Bush's tax cuts. The Lieberman/Warner climate legislation. His own immigration reform bill, which he now opposes. Whether lobbying groups should need to reveal the names of their donors. The recent gigantic finance-sector bailout. And other issues I don't feel like typing.
* During the 2008 campaign, McCain has made it clear in interviews that he has no idea what his global warming policy even is. Literally: he supports "cap and trade", but opposes the actual details of the policy, and gives no sign of being aware of this.
* During the 2008 campaign, McCain has talked again and again of his support for alternative energy, but four times in '07/08, a bill extending tax breaks for alternative energy sources got 59 of the 60 Senate votes it would have needed to break the Republican filibuster and pass. In other words, it kept falling one vote short. McCain (unlike Obama) did not show up for even one of those four votes.
* During the 2008 campaign, McCain has _repeatedly_ made it clear that he can't tell Sunni Muslims from Shia Muslims, which may sound minor, but is like not being able to tell Greenpeace from Exxon.
* Every single key member of McCain's campaign staff was until this campaign a professional lobbyist. Every danged one of them, the most repulsive being his chief economic advisor Phil Gramm, his campaign strategist Charlie Black, and his "transition team" head William Timmons (the man in charge of helping McCain set up his presidency if elected).
* They've been lobbyists not merely for oil companies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the credit industry, and predatory lenders, but a lobbyist for Saddam Hussein (yes really: Timmons liked the money). Lobbyists for Angolan terrorist Jonas Savimbi, the Chinese oil company, Zaire's murderous dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, Somalia's Marxist dictator Siad Barre, and the not-precisely-democratic president of ex-Soviet Georgia for whose benefit McCain would have us make threatening gestures at Russia.
* And McCain questions OBAMA's devotion to America? The heck? I don't think McCain is personally corrupt, except as a husband, that's not my point. But when all of his chosen advisors have been paid tools of the rich and vicious and (yes) foreign, McCain's honest judgments are going to be corrupted from the start.
* McCain has asked for, and gotten, endorsements from the following religious figures:
1) One (Pat Robertson) who believes that Hurricane Katrina was caused by gays and that the Catholic church is a “great whore”
2) One (Jerry Falwell) who believes that 9/11 was caused by the ACLU;
3) One (Rod Parsley) who believes that the US was founded to destroy Islam;
4) and one (Sun Myung Moon) who believes that Jesus was a failure and that he himself is the Messiah.
He renounced Parsley later, but has not renounced the other three. No, I don't for the world think McCain agrees with Robertson, Falwell, or Moon's crazier beliefs, but
* McCain questions OBAMA becuase of his pastor, whose political views Obama has loudly repudiated? The heck?
* McCain, as recently as 2007, went on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show and praised Liddy as a great American. Liddy, in the 1970s, helped organize the Watergate burglary and the cover-up, and also tried to arrange the assassination of then-famous journalist Jack Anderson. (Liddy went to prison for these things.) In the 1990s, Liddy urged listeners to "shoot to kill" if approached by federal agents, and bragged that his gun target practice used pictures of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. I don't care that much, except
* McCain attacks OBAMA as a friend to terrorists? The heck? Becuase Obama once served on a bipartisan (Republican/Democrat) education reform board with, among others, some "Bill Ayers" dude who, back before Ayers was Chicago's Citizen of the Year or Obama turned 9, was a left-wing apprentice version of Liddy? Obama has never called Ayers a great American. Shut up, McCain.
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The story I hear, over and over, is that John McCain was once an honorable man, a wise man, who has perhaps buckled some in the heat of a presidential election. And it's true that McCain has been an unpredictable man in some ways, has even done some good things and has even occasionally not taken them back.
But no: I see him as having been a rich, spoiled playboy until he got too old for that, at which point he soured into a rich, spoiled, angry crank. Even reporters who like him have told stories that show how little he knows about the issues he opines on, and this hasn't changed. That can't be a lack of smarts, but refusal to care.
McCain's votes against veteran's benefits, and his votes to allow the vicious and unsupervised treatment of prisoners, are to me the clearest proofs of his failures as a human being. But as you'll notice, I see others to choose from.
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Member: Brian Block
Location: Greensboro, NC
Reviews written: 200
Trusted by: 281 members
About Me:
Let's give a big Earth welcome to Everett Block, born 10-26-08. Daddy shall return shortly.
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