The myth of big bad John McCain

June 4, 2005

Guest Post by Morbo

The May 30 New Yorker has a profile of John McCain that’s well worth a look.

McCain wants to be president. No surprise there. What is surprising is the number of otherwise sensible people who have been taken in by McCain’s shtick. By some accounts, McCain is the most popular politician in America, a man whose appeal cuts across party lines.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why. McCain is a typical, early 21st century Republican politician. He’s not a maverick, and he’s not worthy of all of this adulation.

The New Yorker article, by Connie Bruck, is not a hatchet job. In fact, I’d say it leans more toward puffery than pummeling. Yet anyone who finishes it should be able to read between the lines and see that McCain is a phony. Still the deification goes on.

Let’s compare the myth of McCain to the reality of McCain, shall we?

Before we get started, I should note that this post is not meant to be a comprehensive liberal slam against McCain. That article, if it has not been written already, will come out as McCain continues to gear up for his run. I look forward to it. What follows are just some observations gleaned from one article about McCain, a piece that, as I said, leans toward puffery but that still unmasks a side of McCain that is often suppressed by an adoring media.

I’d also like to say that there are things about McCain worthy of respect. He served his country admirably during the Vietnam War and was a prisoner for more than five years. He endured horrific torture at the hand of the North Vietnamese. I salute his bravery. I wish, however, he had stuck up for his fellow vets during the 2004 campaign instead of shafting them. (More on this in a minute.)

So let’s get started:

McCain Myth: McCain is a moderate.

Reality: McCain is a typical conservative Republican. That’s how he refers to himself, and that’s what his voting record shows him to be. On at least one issue, abortion, McCain is to the right of President George W. Bush. In 2000, McCain received backing from Religious Right honcho Gary Bauer after Bauer left the race. Bauer backed McCain because McCain promised him that he would apply an anti-abortion litmus test to Supreme Court nominees. Bush, by contrast, would not go that far.

Prior to his falling out with the Christian Coalition, McCain was much beloved by that group and once received an award from its Arizona Chapter. I predict McCain will, prior to the 2008 run, bend over backwards to kiss and make up with these fanatics. (The New Yorker article agrees with me on this point.)

Sure, McCain worked with Russ Feingold on campaign finance reform and has taken a few other moderate stands. But he’s basically a conservative Republican who will move toward the right to please GOP primary voters.

McCain Myth: McCain is not afraid to take an unpopular stand. He’s no flip-flopper.

Reality: McCain is a typical politician who tells people what they want to hear. One example: During the 2000 race, McCain at first criticized the use of the Confederate battle flag in South Carolina, pointing out that many people consider it a symbol of racism. When good old boys down South protested, McCain switched sides, saying that the stars and bars are merely meant to honor Southern heritage. After he left the race, McCain switched again, going back to his original position.

McCain Myth: McCain bases his stands on principle, not partisan politics.

Reality: Oh, really? Then explain this: McCain admits he was not deeply involved in the ongoing debate about Social Security. He was not sure where he stood on the Bush plan. Yet when the plan ran into trouble, he agreed to travel around the country with Bush and shill for it — even though he wasn’t convinced it was a good plan. Great way to serve your constituents and the American people who love you, John.

McCain Myth: McCain is not your typical politician. He’s a man of integrity who will stand up to the sleaze of political campaigns.

Reality: I wish he would. But look at how McCain treated his “friend” John Kerry in 2004. When the swiftboat hacks started their attacks, McCain was the one man who could have put a stop to it. He could have simply said to Bush, “You won’t see me on the trail until this stops. You’re the president and head of the Republican Party. Shut it down if you want my help.” Instead, he issued a tepid statement criticizing the swiftboat hacks and then promptly joined Bush on the campaign trail, promoting a draft dodger who probably didn’t even complete his National Guard service over a decorated war hero. To this day, McCain continues to hang out with George “Bud” Day, one of the swiftboat ringleaders. (I know, I know. The swiftboaters were operating “independently” of the GOP and the Bush campaign. Please. Does anyone believe Rove could not have shut it down with one call if McCain had forced the issue?) Actions speak louder than words, John.

As a vet himself, McCain should have realized what was at stake. If a record like Kerry’s can be grotesquely distorted, turning a hero into a coward in the public mind, then any veterans’ record can be portrayed that way. McCain had a duty to stand up for his fellow vets and denounce in the strongest terms possible what was going on. He failed miserably.

McCain’s behavior here is all the worse because during the 2000 primary, he endured similar attacks. During that race, conservative groups backing Bush spread rumors that McCain had betrayed his country during the war and that his five years as a prisoner of war had made him insane. The attacks greatly angered McCain and rightly so. Yet when he saw his “friend” Kerry being attacked in a similar way, McCain did next to nothing to help his fellow vet and instead used his personal popularity and charisma to help elect the guy whose minions were behind the attacks. Integrity? No way.

McCain Myth: McCain is a maverick. He has bold, new ideas for the country.

Reality: Name one. Other than campaign finance reform, I can’t think of one significant stand McCain takes that deviates significantly from standard GOP ideology. More importantly, what kind of people will McCain appoint to our federal courts? He already promised Bauer that they’ll be lousy.

McCain Myth: McCain plays it straight with the American people and doesn’t play games.

Reality: Oh, please. Everybody and his brother knows that McCain plans to run for president in 2008, yet when asked directly, he acts coy. Typical stuff there.

McCain Myth: McCain’s personal life is above reproach.

Reality: McCain dumped his first wife, who had stuck with him during his years of imprisonment in North Vietnam, and took up with a woman 18 years his junior. He’s a compulsive gambler and highly superstitious. McCain believes in good luck charms, talismans and meaningless rituals (such as chanting bizarre slogans) to make “luck” turn his way. Yeah, this is the guy whose hand I want on the nuclear trigger.

The good news is that the Religious Right continues to hate McCain’s guts. As I said, he will undoubtedly start sucking up to Jesus Brigade very soon in advance of his run — but they’ll probably tell him to go jump in a lake. Without the Religious Right’s support, McCain will never be an appealing candidate to the average kook who votes in GOP primaries and gets active in the party at the local level. Like 2000, McCain will probably pull off an upset with New Hampshire’s quirky Republicans, be hailed in the press as a new force of nature that is unstoppable — and then sink like a stone once the Southern state primaries come in force.

For once, the Religious Right will have done us all a favor.

Well done, Morbo, and I heartily agree. Certainly, in the limited space available to you, you’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg. McCain is a moral coward, allowing the Bushies to tar and feather his military service and his honor, just as they did to Max Cleland and to Kerry, yet McCain goes out and literally kisses Bush and shills shamelessly for him. If he can take such abominable trashing of who he is as a man and as a public figure without defending himself and his family, and make it an admirable quality, then Dukakis’ answer to the “rape of your wife” question would have propelled him into the White House.

As far as McCain being a maverick, all it takes today to be that in the Rethug party is to publicly disagree with the hard-right ideological agenda they are forcing down America’s collective throat. Look at Lindsay Graham, a man with serious conservative DNA, and how he is being pilloried by the wingnuts for being a part of the Group of 14. Same for DeWine and the other Rethugs in that Group. Hell, just look at what Specter went through to retain his Senate Judiciary Chairmanship at the start of this Congress when he merely hinted that Bush might have to compromise on his radical judicial nominees. No, McCain is a card-carrying memeber of the hard-right as it exists today.

I also agree that if McCain becomes a serious candidate, all of his myths will be exposed. I just hope that America, especially consciencious Dems, will have the scales removed from their eyes in time to avoid yet another disastrous presidency. McCain is a fraud as a moderate and a maverick, just as is Chuck Hagel — and Hagel may be more dangerous because the public is less well-imformed about him and is therefore more likely to buy in to the “conventional wisdom” that he is a centrist.

Quere for you, Morbo: How likely is a possible “unity ticket” of McCain for President and Joe Lieberman for Vice-President?

  • I’ll “third” the praise for Morbo’s post and add another heaping helping for Analytical Liberal’s, too. Please, please: no unity tickets. I want some form of “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” for once. No polling, no focus groups, a bold assertion of LIBERAL policies and programs, domestic and international.

  • Let’s not forget McCain’s decided and troubling lack of outrage (and willingness to force some sort of accountability at the policy-making level) over U.S. treatment of its prisoners of war. For the life of me I cannot understand why he does nothing on this. To me, it neutralizes much of the drama and emotional appeal of his biography. If he wants to be president so badly, “doing the right thing” on this issue seems a no brainer for McCain. Yet, beyond some remarks when this mess first came to light, he has done absolutely nothing to demand a true accounting and call the administration on its shameful policies.

  • I think there are plenty of reasons not to want McCain to be president, but the ones you’re stating are not the troubling ones. The troubling ones are the generally moderate to conservative Republican positions he holds. But the points that you are making here just don’t seem very worthy. They’re the kind of points that anyone could find to use against potential Democratic candidates, too. We all know that McCain wants to run for president and to have a chance at that he has to show some loyalty to this administration. In television interviews where he had been tapped to support the Bushies, it was often clear that his feelings toward them were lukewarm. Virtually all of the Democratic candidates at one time or another attacked John Kerry and then when party unity was called for flip-flopped. You haven’t presented evidence of anything that could be called excessive flip flopping or important flip flopping.

    And the criticism that McCain doesn’t have bold new ideas for the country because his ideology is the GOPs — well, could you say anything different of Kerry, really? And it’s far too early to judge what McCain’s ideas would be if he actually won the nomination and could play to the middle.

    And as for the attack on his personal life: You voted for Bill Clinton, didn’t you? Do you really think that you’ve uncovered anything here that you’d want people to use as the basis for their voting selection?

    I realize you’re trying to tear down specific myths. Mind you, the only one I’m familiar with is the belief that he’s a moderate Republican who won’t always tow the line for the current administration. But if I were tempted to vote for him (and I’m not) it would be reading more detailed information about that voting record that would change my mind about him.

  • Oh, the soft tyranny of lowered expectations!

    McCain is a fine example of how fucked up the Repugs are: just because he’s not a foaming-at-the-mouth, graft-taking-and-proud-of-it, called-by-god, crazed Jeezo-thug and/or obvious corporate shill, he stands out amongst the Repugs as a “man of integrity”.

    The entire halo around McCain is attributable to his Vietnam service and his work with Feingold on finance “reform”. That’s how low the bar has sunk for a “moderate” Repug: serve your country instead of dodging the draft, and take at least one visible policy stand against corruption.

    Compared to Shrub, Darth Vader, “man-on-dog” Santorum, Bolton, DeLay, Rice, Frist, Scalia, Gonzales, Coburn, Brownback, and that whole cast of characters, McCain is a fine upstanding American. Talk about damning with faint praise, though…

  • To answer Analytic Liberal’s query, I don’t see a McCain-Lieberman ticket as likely. Lieberman is a conservative Democrat, but he at least claims to be pro-choice on abortion — that is, he has not called for banning the procedure outright. These days, a GOP Prez/VP ticket must be “pro-life” — both of them — or it will sink during the primaries.

  • Thanks for the thousand words to compliment the picture of Bush and McCain hugging. Any illusions I had about McCain dissappeared when I saw that. Hopefully, the religious right won’t get behind a man who’s name means ‘Son of Cain’.

  • The only thing that McCain has done in recent years that I can approve of was opposing the wastefulness of the medicare prescription drug act. I don’t want him to be president especially not after his behavior in 2004. He’s a;so far too hawkish on North Korea. I do think that we’d be better off if he’d been president instead of GWB. I think he would have vetoed some of thr graft.

    Now there is that Iowa Congressman (R) who wants to set up an investigation of war profiteering whom I kind of like.

  • One more thing, what will that damn Bull Moose, Marshall Wittman who currently hangs his hat at the DLC, but used to work for McCain, if the man runs?

  • The Rude Pundit summed it up best about McCain.

    Alas, John McCain

    He might have been a hero once, but today he’s just a coward and a sellout. Seeing him sidle up under Bush’s armpity in the campaign last year made me puke.

  • The Rude Pundit summed it up best about McCain.

    Alas, John McCain

    He might have been a hero once, but today he’s just a coward and a sellout. Seeing him sidle up under Bush’s armpit in the campaign last year made me puke.

  • I haven’t really given McCain to much thought but the post by MLach really drives home a good point. Above everything else said about him, where’s the outrage?

    Our growing torture scandals may end up being the biggest stain ever on the reputation of the United States.

  • McCain is simply Orrin Hatch 2.0 — basically just an upgrade, but hyped as a new release.

    Granted, it ships with the improved war-hero biography module, and all of the media-interface routines have been re-written, but it’s just an upgrade.

  • I agree with all this up to a point, and I broadly sympathize with the overall critique of McCain. As someone who really admired him before 2004, his behavior last year was a terrible disappointment and probably had as much to do with Bush’s victory as that of anyone else besides the two principals in the election. I’d add that the New Yorker profile reminded me that when it comes to foreign policy, McCain is a true neocon unilateralist hawk–way to the right of even the Lieberman crowd. While I do believe that as a vet and a real student of war-fighting, he’d do a much better job than the current crew of delusional ideologues, and that as a critic of the campaign finance system he’d end the current disgusting practice of having Republican-friendly defense contractors exercise partial veto power over the military budget, he’s still way too hot-blooded on war-and-peace issues for my taste.

    Publius has the big point here, though: compared to the foaming wingnut madmen he’s likely to face in the 2008 primaries, McCain really does look like a statesman. And I still hope–though admittedly his actions last year cast doubt on this–that in his heart, he differs from most Republicans in ultimately putting country ahead of party. His positions on campaign finance and global warming, among others, also suggest to me a public figure who looks at issues empirically rather than through an exclusive ideological or partisan lens. That’s a lot more akin to TR, FDR and Bill Clinton than to any modern Republican of prominence, and to me that’s the most important characteristic in a presidential aspirant.

    Finally, I hope that the right-wing freak club smears him so brutally and effectively that he really does bolt the party. It will be the last act of his public life, and his streaks of narcissism and need for attention, currently buried, could push him out the door rather than behind some sanctimonious tool like George Allen or Sam Brownback.

  • McCain is a really tough man to peg. At times, he strikes me as a genuine crusader for some important issues affecting the nation. But in between these moments of greatness, he behaves in a totally baffling fashion: like the “great” support of Mr. Bush in the final months of Election 2004 when few people have treated McCain worse that Bush and his flunkies.

    If you look at many of the different issues in which he’s been involved, I find it nearly impossible to come up with a overriding consistent philosophy in his approach. Although he’s generally fairly conservative, the extreme right seems to love to hate him. But his endorsement of Bush and some of the other happy horseshit makes it fairly difficult for centrists and those left of center to feel comfortable about the man.

    Yet I wouldn’t call it a “schtick” either, although I think that term applies to several politicians on both sides of the aisle. I’ve honestly wondered if there’s a bipolar disorder at work with McCain. Otherwise, I don’t quite get the method to his “madness”.

  • I find it hard to think seriously about McCain as the Republican nominee because I find it hard to believe it will ever happen. There is no underestimating the enmity towards McCain felt by the Republican establishment, and I doubt it will ever dissipate to a significant enough degree where he could garner the nomination in a party that is as tightly controlled as the present Republican party. The poster comparing him to Hatch made me laugh. Remember when Hatch ran in 2000? I have it on good authority from someone close to Hatch is that Hatch did so only because there was fear that if Bush fell apart, people didn’t want the nomination to drop into McCain’s lap. If the Republicans can annoint someone as inexperienced as Bush was when they began the process of doing in 97, they will find someone else in 08 to defeat McCain. Early indications are that it will be George Allen. It would nice to get M. Warner to run against him in 06 to at least take some of the luster off of him, but I tend to doubt Warner wants to run any more campaigns in VA, preferring to make his next run on a national stage.

  • It would nice to get M. Warner to run against him in 06 to at least take some of the luster off of him, but I tend to doubt Warner wants to run any more campaigns in VA, preferring to make his next run on a national stage.

    And I think Warner will be a solid competitor to Allen on the national stage in 2008. Especially as Allen is starting to emerge as the GOP goto boy for 2008.

  • Rude Pundit can go fuck himself with a spiked mace–hard and deep. While I agreed with the gist of what he said, his presentation was uncalled for. How FUCKING clever he was, melodramatically mocking the ordeal that McCain and many others went through. What the fuck does RP know about that? Does he care what so many brave men endured on the other side of the planet? Has he ever felt anything worse than a hangnail? There are ways and ways to make a point and, by sneering at those who suffered and bled from his little position of utter safety, he’s shown that he’s willing to take the low road, belittling the hell that others went through because all that matters is to show us his immense, bottomless cleverness. Eat shit and die, RP.

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