When John McCain is asked how he’s substantively different from George W. Bush, the senator has a programmed response he repeats without hesitation. At the top of the list: “climate change.”<\/p>\n
Indeed, McCain, at least recently, has made his “green” credentials a key part of this early stage of his campaign. Two weeks ago, he traveled quite a bit to talk up<\/a> his plan to combat global warming. “I’m proud of my record on the environment,” McCain told reporters<\/a>. “As president, I will dedicate myself to addressing the issue of climate change globally.”<\/p>\n There are more than a few problems with McCain’s boasts. For one thing, McCain’s environmental positions shift all the time<\/a>, and some of his policy opinions contradict each other. For another, McCain has a nasty habit of promoting environmental policies he’s already voted against<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, McCain wants voters to consider him someone who’ll work hard to address global warming if he’s in the White House. In the meantime, though, he’s not willing to work hard at all<\/a> to address global warming while he’s in the Senate.<\/p>\n While Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has made action on climate change a central theme in his campaign, he won’t be on hand to vote next week when the Senate considers a landmark bill imposing mandatory limits on greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n In a press conference late Wednesday afternoon, McCain said he did not support the bill sponsored by two of his closest allies, Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.) because it doesn’t offer enough aid to the nuclear industry, and he would not come to the floor to vote on it. <\/p>\n “I have not been there for a number of votes. The same thing happened in the campaign of 2000,” he said. “The people of Arizona understand I’m running for president.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That’s probably true. But the people of the country also understand that he’s promising to be a “leader<\/a>” on one of the nation’s most pressing issues. And I’ll give McCain a tip: leaders show up for work once in a while. Matt at TP noted<\/a> all of the hot air (pardon the pun) McCain has offered on the issue.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) sought to distance himself from President Bush by calling for a mandatory limit on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. “I will not shirk the mantle of leadership that the United States bears,” McCain said in a speech at a wind power company.<\/p>\n On his campaign website, McCain (R-AZ) calls himself “a leader on the issue of global warming,” which he says is “an issue we can no longer afford to ignore”:<\/p>\n “John McCain has a proud record of common sense stewardship. Along with his commitment to clean air and water, and to conserving open space, he has been a leader on the issue of global warming with the courage to call the nation to action on an issue we can no longer afford to ignore.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It all sounds very impressive, right up until you ask McCain to actually do something on the issue on which he claims to be “leading.”<\/p>\n And just for good measure, let’s also not forget that if McCain did show up for work, he’d vote against the Lieberman-sponsored legislation on global warming. This comes just two weeks after McCain appeared at Jersey City’s Liberty Science Center to talk about how great the bill is<\/a>: “I hope that it will be passed and I hope that the entire Congress will join in supporting it and the president of the United States would sign it.”<\/p>\n So, McCain flip-flops on a major environmental bill, but won’t bother to show up to vote against it. Sounds like “leader,” doesn’t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When John McCain is asked how he’s substantively different from George W. Bush, the senator has a programmed response he repeats without hesitation. At the top of the list: “climate change.” Indeed, McCain, at least recently, has made his “green” credentials a key part of this early stage of his campaign. Two weeks ago, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nLexi Shultz, deputy director of the climate program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said, “If you don’t come back to vote on the bill, you can’t say that you’re all that serious about taking action on climate change.”<\/p>\n