Will the real John McCain stand up? Actually, I don't expect him to, now that he is the Republican presidential candidate, he is pandering to the irrationalities that drive his party. Nor is it likely that the fawning mass media will pressure him to the point of clarity. But I remain genuinely confused as to what makes him tick.
McCain is the most confounding of candidates, veering as he does from the stance of provincial reaction to sophisticated enlightenment within an almost instantaneous time frame. He did it last week, when he blasted Barack Obama for being soft in appraising America's adversaries while in the same moment, calling for sensible rapprochement with Vladimir Putin's Russia on nuclear arms control. While such unpredictability can be appealing in a senator, it is unnerving in a possible president.
Unpredictability is welcome as evidence of fresh thinking, but not when it suggests inconsistencies that may be born more of crass opportunism than of insight. There are major contradictions in the McCain America has witnessed over the years that are truly troubling.
One is squaring the Mr.-Clean-of-the-Senate McCain, who teamed up with the remarkably principled Democrat Russ Feingold to sponsor historic campaign finance legislation, with the McCain who has brought big money lobbyists into the center of his Senate office and campaign operation. Those connections with the Beltway bandits remind one that McCain was previously one of the "Keating Five"--senators whose support of deregulation, a code word for undermining legitimate government oversight of business shenanigans facilitated the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s and '90s. Not a happy association, at a time when the consequences of bank deregulation surfaces as the subprime mortgage lending scandal that is wrecking the U.S. economy.
Then there is the heroic-warrior McCain, who rose above his own wounds to team up with fellow Vietnam War hero, Democrat John Kerry, to pave the way for normalization of relations with Vietnam. McCain had the courage to reach out to Hanoi, despite a very strong domestic opposition that accused him of betraying the MIAs left behind in Vietnam by negotiating with the former enemy. The subsequent progress on that issue, where U.S. teams could more freely investigate plane crash sites in Vietnam, vindicated McCain, who has favored other diplomatic overtures, including a controversial suggestion of meeting with Hamas. Yet he now attacks Obama for saying he would meet with the leaders of Iran.
On a related point, it is difficult to square the ex-POW's unequivocal condemnation of torture with his accommodation to President Bush's torture policy. Holding Senate hearings on torture, McCain brought the weight of his own experiences against the administration's flimsy rationalizations. He even held to that principled position during the early primaries, but then ended up voting for legislation that has helped make torture legal, at least in the eyes of the president.
The third major gap between the principled-Sen. McCain and the presidential candidate McCain concerns his stance toward the military-industrial complex that has seized upon the fearmongering in post 9/11 America to justify the biggest peacetime military budget in any nation's history. As a senator, McCain was a rare and forceful voice against enormous waste in the military budget for programs designed to fight an enemy that no longer existed and which could not be justified in the name of fighting terrorism. Thanks in part to McCain's vigilance, a defense contracting scandal he exposed resulted in a Pentagon procurement officer and the CFO of Boeing being sentenced to federal prison, when it was revealed that the Air Force was leasing unneeded air tankers at an initial cost of $30 billion.
It was not the first time that McCain had risen on the Senate floor to accuse the Pentagon of being in cahoots with defense industry lobbyists, and he does deserve high marks for being one of the few members of Congress willing to hold the military-industrial complex accountable. But we hear little from that McCain these days as he goes on and on praising a pointless war in Iraq that has become the main excuse for wasting trillions in so-called defense dollars.
This last is the deal breaker. It is simply not possible to be a genuine small-government-give-taxpayers-a-break president while planning to pour trillions more down the rat hole of failed imperial adventures.
Robert Scheer is the author, most recently, of "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America," to be published this week by Twelve Books.
Unfortunately for McCain, it looks like the guy in Heaven is more powerful than his backer and just might be on the side of the skinny black guy with the funny name. No really. Everything just seems to fall into place to get this hero-guy into the oval office: Michigan and Florida going early which zaps Clinton of two whammy-wins early on, Clinton hiring Penn who doesn't know his shorts from his navel, McCain winning the Republican nomination which'll pit a young, vibrant, change-agent against someone who's given up on his principles, has an age and temper problem, and has as much charisma as a wet rag that's been sat on by a puppy for too long.
Has to be a terrible "variable" hanging out over John's head. New York Times likely has the follow up goods on the story waiting in the wings. I, for one, believe that John's goose is cooked. He looks like an old duffer who is scripted. I think if McCain gets ugly, then Iseman comes out of the sand to destroy the military hero in the eyes of the John Wayne induced republican public. It's just no fun for the old boys anymore, they've gotta be in it solely for the money, and there's no "art" in money.
And that is exactly what has happened to McCain. He has let his ambition overcome his judgment.
As a Senator he took some very good and prinicpaled stands. But he sees the only way of becoming President is by pandering to the worst elements of his party. Probably because that is the only way to raise enough money to have a shot at the Presidency.
It comes down to money.
But McCain is mistaken. The only way he could succeed is by playing his instincts as a maverick. As a independent thinker using his best judgment to do what is right, not what is ideologically pure.
But he can't do that. And as a result he will go down as a footnote in history as the man who lost the election to America's first African-American President.
McCain's approach is more cautious, and more likely to result in long lasting stability. Obama's is much more risky, and could lead to long term instability, which would cost far, far more to deal with.
Considering the fact that the lion's share of the "trillions more" you mention have already been accrued in the form of veterans benefits that will be paid regardless of who wins in November, taking such a big risk now makes very little sense. We won't save much money by doing so, and certainly not enough to justify the risky scheme Obama has in mind.
That is news to me.
Bush and McCain offer NO END to the madness. I have heard NOTHING about how they would bring the American occupation to a close. In fact I hear them imply that we will occupy the country indefinately. That is what the security agreement is all about. Making Iraq America's latest colony.
Which will not work. Not in a million years will the Iraqi people cave in and become an American Protectorate ie: Colony.
Never.
Read McCain's own words going back ten years and you will see that McCain has changed his positions and changed back again many times.
Flip-Flop McCain has no integrity.