Most Recent News: Brad Whitford and Richard Schiff corroborate my post in Friday's New York Times piece by Elisabeth Bumiller.
Second Update: McCain and Me: Hero Worship Dies Hard (But When It Does...)
Update: Through a spokesperson with the colorful name Tucker Bounds, McCain has denied telling me he didn't vote for Bush in 2000. "It's not true," Bounds told the Washington Post, "and I ask you to consider the source."
My sentiments exactly -- because John McCain has a long history of issuing heartfelt denials of things that were actually true.
He denied ever talking with John Kerry about his leaving the GOP to be Kerry's '04 running mate -- then later admitted he had, insisting: "Everybody knows that I had a conversation."
He denied admitting that he didn't know much about economics, even though he'd said exactly that to the Wall Street Journal. And the Boston Globe. And the Baltimore Sun.
He denied ever having asked for a budget earmark for Arizona, even though he had. On the record.
He denied that he'd ever had a meeting with comely lobbyist Vicki Iseman and her client Lowell Paxon, even though he had. And had admitted it in a legal deposition.
And those are just the outright denials. He's also repeatedly tried to spin away statements he regretted making (see: 100-year war, Iraq was a war for oil, etc.).
So, yes, by all means, "consider the source."
Original Post: At a dinner party in Los Angeles not long after the 2000 election, I was talking to a man and his wife, both prominent Republicans. The conversation soon turned to the new president. "I didn't vote for George Bush" the man confessed. "I didn't either," his wife added. Their names: John and Cindy McCain (Cindy told me she had cast a write-in vote for her husband).
The fact that this man was so angry at what George Bush had done to him, and at what Bush represented for their party, that he did not even vote for him in 2000 shows just how far he has fallen since then in his hunger for the presidency. By abandoning his core principles and embracing Bush -- both literally and metaphorically -- he has morphed into an older and crankier version of the man he couldn't stomach voting for in 2000.
McCain's fall has been Shakespearean -- and really hard to watch for those, like myself, who so admired and even loved him. His nobility and his true reformer years have given way to pandering in the service of ambition.
But a large portion of the electorate hasn't noticed the Shakespearean fall. How else to explain The 28/48 Disconnect -- wherein only a die-hard 28 percent of voters still approve of Bush, but 48 percent say they'd vote for McCain, who is running on the "more of the same" platform?
The thing is, these voters clearly still think of McCain as the maverick of 2000, a straight shooter who would never seek the embrace of a man he couldn't bring himself to vote for, nor accept the regular counsel of Karl Rove, the man behind the vile, race-baiting attacks on him during the 2000 campaign.
And the main reason for The 28/48 Disconnect is the mainstream media's ongoing membership in the John McCain Protection Society. They too continue to party -- and report on McCain -- like it's 1999.
Look at the slack they cut him after his infamous stroll through a Baghdad market was revealed as an utter sham. James Frey was eviscerated for far less. Or the slack they cut him after his repeated confusion of Sunni and Shia. Or the slack they cut him when his promise to run a "respectful" campaign ran aground on his sleazy attempt to connect Barack Obama and Hamas.
Every time McCain screws up, the media jump all over themselves to make it better, as if grandpa had said something embarrassing at the dinner table and it needed to be smoothed over as quickly as possible.
The latest example came late last week when the Straight Talk Express hit an oil slick and skidded off the road. Click here for the blow by blow, but, in short, McCain implied that Iraq is essentially a war for oil, then tried to take it back, explaining that he was actually talking about the first Gulf War, then, when pressed, denied that he was actually talking about the first Gulf War.
And, by and large, the media gave him a pass. Chris Matthews called the original war for oil comment "an astounding development," but most everyone else was too busy picking over the bones of the Wright/Obama carcass to give it much play.
Interestingly, McCain's mental meltdown over the reason we invaded Iraq was prompted by a comment from a McCain supporter who said he hoped a group called "Swift Boats for McCain" would be formed to help McCain in the campaign.
The gentleman needn't worry. The group already exists. It's called "the media." And they are very well-funded, and highly motivated. The Swift Boat Media for McCain are, for instance, going to make sure that we hear a lot more about the nuances of Obama's decision to not wear a flag pin on his lapel than about McCain's ideas on a little thing like the Iraq war.
Witness the reaction to McCain's repeated declarations that he thinks we should be in Iraq for "100 years." The DNC had the gall to use McCain's own words in an ad, causing McCain to flip out: "My friends, it's a direct falsification," he said, "and I'm sorry that political campaigns have to deteriorate in this fashion."
So, to review: using a candidate's own words against him is off limits, but making disgraceful insinuations about Hamas and Obama isn't.
But instead of nailing McCain on the "deterioration" of his ethics -- to say nothing of his logic and reasoning -- the Swift Boat Media dutifully repeated his talking points, as in this AP lede claiming, without reservation, that the DNC ad "falsely suggests John McCain wants a 100-year war in Iraq."
McCain tries to wriggle away from his "100 year" comment by saying that he wasn't talking about a hundred year war, but a very long term commitment of U.S. troops, like we have in Germany or South Korea. Maybe so, but the last time I looked no one was blowing up American soldiers in Wiesbaden.
The New Yorker's Rick Hertzberg, a writer who hasn't drunk the It's Still 2000 Kool-Aid, sums up McCain's Strangelovian "vision": "McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal -- that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay."
The John McCain the media fell in love with in 2000 isn't on the ballot in 2008. And the proof has all but jumped up and grabbed the media by the throat: the ring-kiss of "agents of intolerance" Falwell and Robertson; the decision to make permanent tax cuts he twice voted against, saying he could not "in good conscience support" them; the campaign finance reformer replaced with a candidate whose campaign is run by lobbyists and fueled by loophole rides on his wife's jet; the hard-line stance against torture replaced by a vote allowing waterboarding; the guarded-by-a-battalion stroll through the "safe" neighborhoods of Baghdad; the use of Karl Rove as an advisor... and the embracing of the disastrous policies of a man he so abhorred he would not vote for him.
What will it take for the Swift Boat Media to realize that John McCain jumped the shark a long, long time ago?
For more coverage of John McCain, go to HuffPost's John McCain page.
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I wonder what you think was so wonderful about him. He's a Republican. By definition, he is not wonderful, yet you were apparently surprised when he turned more rightward than Bush for this election. I am not surprised. Maybe you did not examine his actual record of legislation as closely as you should have before deciding, as many people erroneously did, that he was a maverick or a liberal Republican. He was not and has never been a great guy who changed when power beckoned. Like most leaders, he is ill with greed. Where's the surprise?
Don't mistake me, I think that your blog is a great thing and the fact that you changed so much is a great thing. Liberal used to mean a middle-of-the-road American.
The Constitution lies in shreds, no one is impeached, the Bill of Rights is a joke. Habeas Corpus, a much older law, is ignored by these torturing monsters. They don't deserve us. They do not represent us. Politicians, since the days of Rome,have been scoundrels and liars. They may not start that way, but they get power and it corrupts them. It is only us, working together, who can bring change to this suffering world. And I am afraid we are going to be too late.
Keep this post up for another 3 months and you'll break a thousand responses.
OC
Worked 20 years ago, will work in November. Buy Euros, stockpile food, send your draft-age kids out of the country. And be prepared for your cell phone and Internet connections to become spotty or disappear altogether.
Any yahoo video upload can be found at the yahoo "video" search engine. The title is "Pantsuit Vixens For Hillary". It has a little trib to Tina Fey! I thank you!
Is she a republican?
Since that time he has walked in lockstep with Bush and the Republicans. He is a charletan of the worst order. The only reason he didn't go to jail for the Savings & Loan scandal (which his partner, John Keating did) was he turned state's evidence.
Now he is allied with Leibowitz, who is a Senator looking for a constituency (Connecticut will never re-elect him); The Democratic candidates don't want his endorsement, won't ask for it although he caucuses with them as a party; The Republicans use him as a puppet because he is obligated to them for not running a candidate against him in CT, so he could be elected as an "Independent." He was once a Liberal, a Democrat, and is now a quasi-independent marching in lockstep with Bush and the Republican minority. He doesn't know to whom he belongs but Mccain can have him and the Democrats will take Connecticut.
Just another little tidbit about McCain and his "anti-lobbyist" campaign.
please take the time to inform yourselves . . . this is our path to victory in 2008. Spread the link and bring awareness to this sick, twisted, horrific anti-American fascist ideology and agenda.
We do not need these people controlling the most powerful position in the free world -- it would be to our certain peril as a free nation.
I am actually begging you to engage and shout out from the mountain tops. please. Knowledge and Information are our greatest weapon. I can't believe even the most "reasonable" conservatives would support this madness.
Please -- Do Something!!!
MB covers the same Event: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/rapture-ready-the-unauth_b_57826.html
Unfortunately, McCain has even more homegrown and self-serving agendas that have violated human rights stateside . These hidden agendas have barely seen the light of day. Google "McCain Dineh Navajo Peabody" .
Nothing speaks more loudly about a man's blind, dangerous partisanship than the sacrifice of his country's safety to his party's short-term interest. Nothing speaks more plainly of a man's corrosive ambition for the White House than Mr. Straight-talk's pimping of a buffoon in exchange for a shot at the nomination in '08.
There are many things that disqualify McCain for our support but this is the most damning.
fp
Very nicely written. However. I fear that there are may other things that this American has done that speak with equal volume.
He speaks of heath care that he has never had to buy.
He speaks of working Americans with ostensible impunity - yet he's NEVER been on anything but the public payroll
He admittedly speaks of his lack of skill in economics - yet - he's been at the center of one banking scandal and is economic adviser Phil Gramm (also campaign co chair) is most noted for being at the center of the current sub-prime scandal
He reversed his own position and didn't support the torture ban
We've devoted a few lines from time to time to this paragon of contradiction.
Binx101
The Almost Daily Binx
http://binx101.wordpress.com
That brings us to John McCain. This strange creature, once the hero of moderates and independents, might be viewed as sort of a weird amalgamation of Prescott and George W.—half pragmatic politician, half true believer nut case. But though McCain reeks with many of Bush’s frat, bad boy personality traits, his go it alone ways have alienated him from the rightwing ideologues. It’s hard to imagine any political strategy in which McCain can fire up the Republican base and still maintain his carefully crafted straight talk image. This brings us back to the fundamental question of will the black vote override the redneck vote. In a McCain vs. Obama race it’s still an open question. If the Republicans are successful in making the contest mostly about Race, McCain wins. If on the other hand the redneck vote goes AWOL, Obama wins. But since hate, as that great American philosopher, Eric Hoffer, has strongly suggested is the most powerful of unifying forces, I would put my money on McCain.