McCain's Campaign: Not the Same Man We Liked, Respected

I have mostly liked and respected John McCain--at least since the time he was found to have exercised "poor judgment" in his involvement with the Keating Five. Still, I don't support his presidential aspirations, and I have some issues with his ideological predispositions. But as a Vietnam-era Marine, it is easy for me to respect his sacrifice and suffering for our country. And his public candor, his political courage, in pointing out the problems with his own party's positions, including his president's positions, on things like finance reform, irresponsible tax policy, immigration, off-shore drilling, and global warming, were bold and refreshing--and more than that, they were right.

But those days appear to be gone. He is now swallowed up in a Republican campaign machine led by many of the same folks that led the last Bush campaign, pandering as they do to conservative ideologues and the Christian Right, and "swift-boating" political opponents.

My disappointment in him is summed up by two quite different perspectives in recent articles reflecting puzzlement and dismay at the new John McCain. The first is from Time, the second from The Economist.

Time's "What Bush Taught McCain" was written by Joe Klein. Joe Klein is a left leaning centrist who over the years has found much to like and commend about John McCain, even if there was also much to disagree with him about. But he finds the new John McCain discomfiting and unlikable.

The woman, a venture capitalist from the Denver area...decided she just couldn't vote for John McCain this year. "I supported him enthusiastically in 2000, but he's hired the same people who ran him into the ground last time to run his campaign," she said. McCain's tone was more negative now. "It breaks my heart."

...Ronald Reagan never staged an ugly August. He attacked his opponents, but on the high ground of policy...But then Reagan was operating at the beginning of a political pendulum swing, utterly confident that his ideas were better than the tired industrial-age liberalism and post-Vietnam pacifism of the Democrats.

Michael Crowley of the New Republic recently observed that the McCain campaign was the most sarcastic in memory. He's right: sarcasm comes naturally to the fighter jock. He disdains all those — his colleagues in the Senate, his political opponents — who aren't as courageous as he thinks he is. But McCain has proved a selective maverick, surrounded by special-interest lobbyists who shape his foreign and fiscal policies. In fact, I suspect that this year's McCain is closer to the real thing than the noble 2000 version. This one is congenitally dark, the opposite of Reagan — not confident enough in the substance of his ideas, especially on domestic policy, to run a campaign that features them. Instead, his natural sarcasm has enabled him to perfect the Bush way of politics.

The Economist's "Bring Back the Real McCain," in the "Leaders" section, reflects more a sense of disappointment over an old political friend now lost, than Klein's writing off of a previously respected maverick and sometime opponent. After noting that they particularly like McCain for his past political courage, "his robust commitment to free trade, and his firmness in the face of American losses in Iraq," they also note their concern with his advancing age (72) and his "legendary volcanic temper," both of which they concede have been managed well so far. But they are a little more troubled about his unbridled hawkish views:

Many Americans see him as a warmonger, a man who would be happy to bomb Iran if that is the only way to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons, who is more than ready to confront Russia, and who supported toppling Saddam Hussein before George Bush was elected and New York and Washington were attacked. This fear is surely overdone: even though Mr McCain is presumably more minded than Mr Obama to attack Iran, neither the joint chiefs of staff nor most of his advisers think that is a good idea. But it is not a completely unreasonable worry. Mr McCain needs to find ways of correcting this perception, rather than making jokes about bombing.

Yet their biggest concern is his apparent, unprincipled abandonment of some core beliefs:

This is not so much true of foreign policy. But even here, he used to talk much more about multilateralism than he does now. On the campaign trail, Mr McCain has tended to stress the more hawkish side of his nature, for instance by promoting his idea for a "league of democracies" that risks being needlessly divisive.

But it is on domestic policy that Mr McCain has tacked to the right more disquietingly. Doubtless he feels he needs to shore up his support among the conservatives who mistrust him. But the result is that he could easily alienate the independent supporters who are his great strength. Mr Obama will sensibly hope to woo them away.

Mr McCain used to be a passionate believer in limited government and sound public finances; a man with some distaste for conservative Republicanism and its obsession with reproductive matters. On the stump, though, he has offered big tax cuts for business and the rich that he is unable to pay for, and he is much more polite to the religious right, whom he once called "agents of intolerance". He has engaged in pretty naked populism, too, for instance in calling for a "gas-tax holiday". If this is all just a gimmick to keep his party's right wing happy, it may disappear again. But that is quite a gamble to take...

Hawkish foreign policy, irresponsible tax cuts, more talk about religion and abortion: all this sounds too much like Bush Three, the label the Democrats are trying to hang around the Republican's neck. We preferred McCain One.

And then there are the more recent revelations about his quixotic choice of running mate: 44-year old Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, a lady of the NRA and Christian Right. A Pentecostal with creationist beliefs, she prays and calls for prayer that the Bush administration is sending our soldiers to Iraq "on a task that is from God." Once the mayor of a very small Alaska town and now governor for two years, she has only little experience with Washington and national issues, and none with international and geopolitical issues. Not likely the profile that will attract many Hillary democrats, or many independents or centrists either, women or men. John McCain's self-assessed claim to strong judgment could again be reasonably questioned. Perhaps he serves us best where he has served for so long: in the U.S. Senate.


http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1836890,00.html
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12009710