A Pundit Not a President

Matt Yglesias has a great post which really captures a key component of McCain's foreign policy approach - it is rooted in hyperbolic rhetoric mixed with hysterical over reaction. As Matt describes it,

Not only is Russia on the march beyond Tbilisi to Ukraine, Finland, and substantial swathes of Poland but that's not even the transcendent issue of our time. And North Korea's nuclear program is "the greatest challenge to U.S. security and world stability today" but that's not the transcendent issue of our time. And Islamism is the transcendent issue of our time, but not a serious international crisis or an especially great challenge to U.S. security and world stability. Now of course there's no way to make sense of that, because it's not supposed to make any kind of sense. McCain just thinks that overreacting is the right reaction to everything. It's a hysteria-based foreign policy.

Each of those statements from McCain sound like they came from an excited media pundit. Well that's because they did.

McCain's approach and tone on foreign policy has always been more emblematic of a TV pundit rather than a sober president. While McCain has attacked Obama as the "celebrity" candidate, the fact is that a bad place to be over the last 25 years has been between John McCain and a TV camera. The New York Times on Sunday noted that one of the first things McCain did after 9-11 was go on just about every TV program - where he incidentally called for attacking about four countries. In its biographical series profiling the candidates the Times also noted that McCain was attracted to the celebrity of the Senate with one close associate noting that McCain "saw the glamour of it. I think he really got smitten with the celebrity of power." McCain clearly enjoys being on television and he has been a constant commentator on the Sunday news shows and the evening talk news programs.

But TV appearances encourage sound bites, over-the-top rhetoric, and good one-liners, not reasoned and nuanced diplomatic language. This is especially true from guests who are not in the current administration, since you are less likely to get invited back on Face the Nation if you down play a crisis or take a boring nuanced position. Thus on almost every crisis or incident over the last decade, McCain has sounded the alarm, ratcheted up the rhetoric and often called for military action - with almost no regards to the practical implications of such an approach.

The big concern with a McCain presidency - a concern which I am surprised has not been vocalized more fully - is that the U.S. will lurch from crisis to crisis, confrontation to confrontation, whether it be with Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc. The danger is that McCain's pundit-like rhetoric will entrap the U.S. in descending spiral of foreign policy brinksmanship. Just think about the very likely scenario of McCain giving Iran/Russia a rhetorical ultimatum and Iran/Russia ignoring it. Now we are stuck - either we lose face by not following through on our threats or we follow through and go to war.  We can't afford such a reckless approach after the last eight years. For the next eight we need a president not a pundit.   

Comments

[research]

McBush = wars forever.

[GASDOCPOL]

Many people equate years of "experience" with competence. Apparently they do not know that there is a difference between 20 years of experience and one year of experience 20 times.

People assume that experience in the Senate means that person knows how to make something go.

Senators discuss and vote. They may or may not have deep and wide understanding of the issues.

Some people think that the bad guys will be afraid of McCain and that only a bully will be respected abroad..

[StephenDedalus82]

Okay, we, the choir, get it, McCain is [insert negative quality here]. But the echo chamber of liberal blogs isn't doing itself any favors by trying to appeal to logic and reason. The most logical choice for president doesn't always win. We should treat John McCain as if he's the most serious, threatening candidate possible. Obama should attack forcefully, rewrite the narrative and make it about McCain. This would have been so much easier with a real candidate for our party, someone with some actual qualifications, but we must deal with the current reality. Otherwise we're going to be sitting in disbelief in November muttering to ourselves about how unfair and irrational it all is that McCain is the next president.

[nellie]

Thank you for this insightful piece. It may explain why the media defers to McCain all the time. He speaks in the same language they do. Media pundits are unable to get any distance from McCain, not only because of his long-standing relationships with them, but because he actually acts like one of them.

And of course, the best thing about pundits is that they don't decide any policy.

I hope others pick up on what you've pointed outl.

[jingles32]

John McC claims his opponent is nothing more than an empty headed celebrity, famous for being famous; an unpatriotic "foreign type" who would lose a war in order to win an election. Just the other day , speaking before a room full of veterans, Sen. McC said that Oba*ma's run for the presidency is fueled by nothing more than blind, selfish AMBITION.



In 2002, as per his memoirs, McC writes that in fact it was nothing BUT ambition; not some lofty ideal, not running on principles he believed in, nor some "grand act of patriotism," that compelled him to take a final shot at the "PRIZE" of the presidency. Seeing as how he views this election, his campaign, as some sort of a reality/game show, not too surprising, but nonetheless pathetic.



"I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because IT HAD BECOME MY AMBITION TO BE PRESIDENT. I was sixty-two years old when I made the decision and I thought IT WAS MY ONE SHOT AT THE PRIZE."

- John Mc*Cain, "Worth the Fighting For: A Memoir" (2002)

[justobserve]

"either we lose face by not following through on our threats or we follow through and go to war".
This is definitely a dangerous path to follow. If we want wars there are plenty of opportunities to have it, wether by our own initiatives of by reacting to others. That's why we have devote to finding compromise to live with each other in this world, especially when we already engaged in two wars with no endings in sight. Agreeing on compromise is hard but it is preferable to wars. History also showed that Americans couldn't tolerate a long war but all wars are long, rarely they are just touch and go.

[highlyamused]

Excellent article. No depth, no clue

[mamacat]

A very good article. It scares the hell out of me that McCain may very well be the next president. If that happens, I can only hope that the Dems get an overwhelming majority in both houses of Congress, but even that may not be enough to stop McCain from blowing us all up.

- a vet for Obama

[dwmulenex]

McCain is a champion rabble rouser who portrays thinking before going to war as a sin, and not going to war as something even worse. Can we really elect a man who never commanded troops or aviators at war on the basis of unsubstantiated claims that he knows how to win wars? Or a man who has an undistingushed military and senatorial career, whose maverick quality was mostly stubborness, hot temper, and faliure to get bipartisan support? A man who will be 72 years old in less than two weeks, who can't remember details, can't use the computer, and whose associates are lobbyists who have already paid for their presidency? A man who told us that he wanted to be President because it was his ambition to be President ? It''s remarkable that voters prefer pat answers with no basis in the man's experience, no basis in reality, and a real basis in lies and flipflops. Or maybe not, since the majority of Americans seem unwilling to impose any accountability for the foreign policy and economic disasters of the last eight years. Why should McCain press the point, when it's so much easier to tell the sheep that peace is kept by wars, middle class jobs are kept by making the very rich very much richer, and two dollar gas is achieved in a year or so by drilling resources that could at best provide 2 percent of the 20 million barrels a day the country consumes?

[GoCards1978]

Thank you for this post. The last thing this country and the rest of the world needs is another neocon as President. Their only true constituency is war profiteers. That leaves the other 99.9% of Americans SOL.

[sandman23]

I am so sick of the POW!!!!/ McCain was not the only POW or MIA.in Nam. Mt husband did two tours there . He was in the AirForce(SAC). He would Never talk about it.. I do know one thing those poor vets were treated poorly. My son has a very good friend that is in Iraq. This is his 3rd tour over there and he said almost all of the troops there want out. They realize the war a a huge blunder. These tours have strained his marriage . His wife hates to e-mail him about the day to day challenges. She wants him to remain focused. My son said the same thing. His wife fears he will be sent to Afgan. We all pray everyday that he will return safe.
McCain makes me sick with all of his talk. Everyone says McCain was right about Georgia and Barack was slow and wrong. What was so wrong with O's statement? I felt much better with what O said.

[BookDesigner]

Actually, we could use a pundit in the presidency--in the older sense of "a learned man; a teacher." That "pundit" is now used for empty-headed spewing of opinion on TV and radio is a symptom of the continuing degradation of the English language and it assumes a continuing decline in the assumed and targeted mental age of the viewers and listeners.

Maybe the country does actually deserve McCain in the White House. Until we get education right, very few other things will be right.

[uclafan]

Well said..never could quite figure out the underlying theme with him, but that just about sums it up!

[uclafan]

dugg!

[nk007]

Thank you Mr Bergmann for writing this article. Hopefully it will have wide circulation. John McCain is a master of drama and hysteria. He also likes to hog the Camera and loves the attention he gets from the fawning corporate media. Yet, without any shame he accuses Obama for being a celebrity. Do hypocrites ever look in the mirror? John McCain is the greatest celebrity politician. Corporate media ( or as he once labeled them, his base) have booked McCain on their shows more than any other member of Congress (both the House and the Senate). McCain was all over T.V. following the 9/11 attacks ready to invade Iraq and Syria. Not once did I ever hear him talk about consequences of war or the importance of diplomacy. It seems that McCain is all about promoting himself as a macho and fearless guy just because he was a POW. He always projects the image of being a pompous, holier than thou person who is arleady to unleash a war against some one.