It’s painful to watch the following Web ad, recently released by the McCain campaign, showing clips of big shot Democrats praising John McCain. It’s important to understand that this ad, more than anything else, explains why John “the maverick” McCain won the Republican primary and why he has a reasonably good shot at winning the general election, in spite of the damage George W. Bush and the Republicans in Congress have done to their party’s reputation. McCain has benefited tremendously from the praise he has received from well-respected Democrats.
I painfully admit that I too used to have positive things to say about John McCain, perhaps because I foolishly thought that by praising a Republican who supported a reasonable immigration policy, spoke out against torture, called Jerry Fallwell and other Christian leaders “agents of intolerance,” fought for campaign finance reform, etc., that I could lend credibility to my arguments that the Republicans who take scarier positions on these issues are extremists.
Little did I know that McCain would embrace radical Christian nutball Rod Parsley as a “spiritual guide,” support legislation that allows the CIA to continue torturing, abandon his immigration plan in favor of “border security,” embrace the Bush tax cuts, take a warmongering approach to Iran and Russia, and make the sort of ridiculous campaign promises (balancing the budget by the end of his first term, for example) that would make his supporters sick to their stomachs if they were paying attention (but alas, most McCain supporters and most of the traditional media are too caught up in the great debate over Obama to hear anything McCain has to say.)
The Democrats in these ads sounded so happy and pleased-with-themselves as they praised McCain. They did so, I think, because they thought it would lend them credibility to patronize a “moderate” Republican. “See!” they seem to be shouting, “Look how fair and non-ideological I am. Look at how reasonable and transcendent I’m being in praising a politician who is loyal to the other party!”
The question is: Are Republicans a threat to this country or not? If they are, then under what circumstances is it appropriate for Democratic politicians to be praising Republican politicians? Under what circumstances does it make sense for Democrats to praise their own party’s candidates for being “bipartisan” or “independent”? I don’t think it’s good strategy to alienate honest, well-meaning Republican Americans by demonizing their beliefs (ignorant and misguided as those beliefs may be), but I also don’t think it’s a good strategy to pretend the lesser of two criminals is actually a law-abiding citizen.
McCain scares me. I’m worried he’ll lead us into more unnecessary war, as he has in the past. I’m worried that he’ll cut taxes while federal spending continues to explode, creating the conditions for further economic disaster. I’m worried that he will undermine or destroy the insitutions that protect many Americans from unnecessary poverty and suffering. And I’m disappointed with my party’s leaders for creating a Frankenstein with their self-serving praise. Am I wrong?
I think all those quotes in that video were honest, genuine, and basically fair. The problem, as I see it, is that he has changed his positions. Republicans once loved to call this a ‘flip-flop’.
He changed his position on the Bush tax cuts. He changed his position on offshore drilling. He changed his position on torture (are you kidding!) He used to speak about ‘doing/getting it Right’ in Iraq – not ‘Winning the War’. Once upon a time, this was a reasonable, moderate, Man.
That was before he won the Republican nomination.
I’m especially irritated by his syrupy affectations that he wanted to keep this a ‘civil and respectful election’. Personally, I interpreted that to mean that his campaign was going to focus on – now hold on tight here, this is going to shock the hell out of you – substantive policy debate.
I guess ’substantive policy debate’ is so easily confused with shameless pandering – sorry, my mistake.
Incidentally, this is one area where I get Obama. While his rhetoric and ‘message management’ may not be reaching everyone, it has certainly reached me. I don’t believe that Obama has actually changed his position once in the course of the entire campaign – he has indicated that he’s willing to concede certain points but, only in service to meeting well worthwhile goals. I’m thinking, in particular of off-shore drilling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Iym-8Q7uBY
When Obama ‘changes his position’, he’s actually just being flexible. When McCain changes his position, it is to create a juxtaposition that attempts to highlight a perceived deficiency in Obama’s policies. This is odd since, policy-wise, Obama wins hands down.
Unfortunately, it appears to me that, good policies are not remotely what elections are decided on. Instead, this nebulous quality of Relatability is more often what seems to decide elections of late.
Comment by aaron — August 12, 2008 @ 1:38 am
I think the whole framework of bipartisanship misses something crucial. Partisanship can at times seem to be about supporting a party regardless of what it says or does. Doing that seems pretty mad to me.
But it can, in another sense, be about supporting some cause or objective. And in theory, that goal or objective need not necessarily correlate to a specific party.
If my goal is to win universal health care and there is a Republican who will fight with me to achieve that goal, then I am more than willing to praise him or her. No reservations.
So bipartisanship can mean one of two things, depending on what you mean by partisanship. It can mean (i) not supporting your party irrationally when you need to get something common done, which is very sane, and probably shouldn’t be called “bipartisanship” but rather “nonpartisanship,” i.e. not being insane;
or it can mean (ii) giving up on your cherished beliefs as part of a political compromise, that is, being willing to give up on one thing you dearly love in order to win something else you love even more dearly. (ii) is more difficult to do because it’s often hard to assess which of your cherished goals is most cherished. It’s a kind of political version of Sophie’s choice.
Do you give up on torture in order to win on universal health care? After all, torture afflicts only few, while many many more die from lack of health care every day. In practice, the menu of available choices is much more complicated than this, usually not as stark, and the outcome of compromises is ambiguous.
All that said: McCain was never a maverick. He may have been less of a hardliner on domestic issues than Bush, but–and maybe I’ll blog on this sometime soon–the neocons PREFERRED McCain to Bush on foreign policy.
He was their candidate, and has been all along, and will continue to be should he be elected. If McCain wins, the Kagans of the world will be in charge of our foreign policy. And they see themselves as Soldiers of Liberty in a World Full of Hitlers.
Comment by Lee — August 12, 2008 @ 2:14 am
Relatability has arguably won ever election since 1980. Reagan over Carter and Mondale, Bush I over Dukakas but Clinton over Bush I and Dole. And of course we all remember how the nation would rather have a beer with Bush II than Gore or Kerry.
Comment by John — August 12, 2008 @ 7:49 am