| Friday, December 02, 2005 |
| The real McCain |
 I've often heard Sen. John McCain described as a media hog and a phony by certain conservatives, who suspect -- particularly given his past attacks on the religious right, and his supposed personal antipathy toward President Bush -- that he's not really one of them. But particularly since the 2004 election, I'm more apt to think that they are right, but not for the right reasons. McCain is a phony -- a gauzy confection created by a solicitous media in need of heros, and which adores him (and Rudy Giuliani) merely because he fits an attractive archetype: "The Maverick".
So what makes McCain such a maverick? The fact that he dared to take on the son of a president and challenge his coronation in 2000 (winning New Hampshire and "shocking" the bored political world in the process?) The fact that despite being a Vietnam vet, son of an admiral and a former POW, he was mercilessly slimed by the Rove-Bush team and assorted nasty adjunct groups in South Carolina, including whispering campaigns about his being the Manchurian Candidate, and abandoner of fellow vets, or the father of an illigitimate "nigger baby?" (his adopted daughter is Southeast Asian). Or is it the fact that he supposedly stands up to the president and his party, maverick style? Or was it ... as I suspect ... that damned bus?
Well I'm not buying it. I have no idea whether John McCain likes, dislikes or is indifferent to George W. Bush. I also think it doesn't matter. McCain tethered himself to the president last year -- even after the 2000 antics and even after the president snubbed him repeatedly, even leaving him out of the signing for his own bill (McCain-Feingold) --because it was politically expedient, and he will stay with Bush as long as it remains so, and push him away (i.e., on torture, which I take it at face value that the Senator is sincere on) whenever he needs a maverick jolt. Whatever happens in private, what counts is that McCain hugs and kisses the president in public, defends the administration even on the pre-war intelligence on Iraq, and never to my knowledge has he EVER criticized Bush on television. (On Hardball, he often creates the unusual spectacle of kissing Bush's ass while Matthews kisses his...) McCain also stands up to the GOP when it's advantageous to him, particularly from a media standpoint, and to build his bona fides as the ultimate Good Senator. As his fellow members of Congress get increasingly mired in the corruption swamps of Jack Abramoff and other assorted scandalss, taking them on seems like a better and better strategy for McCain, whose half-assed back-up to John Kerry against the Swiftboat gang last year, combined with his refusal to take even a single step away from the neocons on the war makes him a suspect maverick at best, if you ask me.
I'm not the only one. Ted Rall has written unkindly of McCain's faux populism (and Kerry's attempt at wooing him last year). So has Counterpunch, which calls McCain "the Senator most likely to start a nuclear war." The folks at MyDD have had his number, too. I admit I briefly flirted with the idea that a Kerry-McCain ticket would make sense, but the Arizona Senator's actions during and after the election have left me cold. McCain has 90 percent ratings from the conservative John Birch Society and 83 percent from the Christian Coalition. Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council gave him 100 percent ratings in 2004. If you think the Jerry Falwell wing of the party won't forget the past and collapse into his arms after their candidates are picked off in the 2007 primaries and follow him all the way to November 08, you're kidding yourself.
If McCain can get through the primaries -- which is by no means certain, given the FReeper antipathy toward him and his continuing fights with them over immigration, but which is growing more likely every day -- he would be the GOP's most formidable candidate in the general election, including against Hillary, who he beats in every poll so far (if by shrinking margins...) if for no other reason than the fact that the media adores and worships him. McCain, because he is a politician, not a maverick, knows that, and he's setting the table for his 2008 run -- from sucking up to the president to going super-hawk on the war (unless he really is a neocon, which is even scarier if you think about it), to making amends with the religoius right, he's laying it on thick and preparing to capture the White House.
But don't take it from me. Take it from this guy at The Nation:
The détente with conservatives that began with his vigorous embrace of Bush during the 2004 campaign has become a full-on charm offensive. "If he decides to run for President, the friendship has to be re-established," says McCain political consultant Max Fose. "There haven't always been town halls. There hasn't always been a dialogue." McCain isn't just reaching out on the home front. His office holds regular meetings with conservative leaders in South Carolina, where his approval rating sits at 65 percent. He has met with the Rev. Jerry Falwell, whom he denounced as one of the religious right's "peddlers of intolerance" after the 2000 South Carolina primary. After the antitax Club for Growth began running ads against McCain in New Hampshire, a state he won in 2000, he reversed positions and supported a procedural repeal of the estate tax. He has endorsed conservative Republican Ken Blackwell for Ohio governor. At the suggestion of conservative activist and longtime nemesis Grover Norquist, he campaigned for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's failed referendum initiatives in California, particularly the "paycheck protection" provision targeting unions' political activities. McCain's likely to be the most requested Republican campaigner in 2006 races. "He's the closest thing to a rock star in the Republican Party today," says Michigan Republican Party chair Saul Anuzis. Like it or not, McCain is probably the Republican to beat in 2008. Santorum is toast. Frist is a joke. Nobody knows who George Allen is. Rudy is a wife-dumping serial cheater with scumbag friends (like Bernie Kerik), and an authoritarian, racially divisive past in New York City that has been temporarily stayed by his outstanding one-day performance on 9/11 (it won't stay stayed if he runs, trust me). It's all about McCain, and with Bush weakened and unable to resist by putting up a candidate of his own, with the Senator from Arizona being the next best chance to extend the mission in Iraq (unless Joe Lieberman switches parties), and the best show to hold on to the Whtie House, so the GOP will get with it.
Hopefully the public -- and more importantly the media -- will take a much harder look at the man, and not make the same mistake they did in 2000; giving him a pass because he fit the narrative they wanted to hear.
Tags: politics, News, elections, clinton, John McCain, hillary,2008, Republicans, Democrats,
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posted by JReid @ 11:55 AM   |
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