Forget eyeballing that female lobbyist or getting hated on by Rush Limbaugh. John McCain's real problem was encapsulated in a statement he made not too long ago about not knowing much about economics.
McCain would much rather fight the upcoming election on the basis of national security -- and win in a replay of 2004's "scare the vote" campaign by his new friend George W. Bush. But John McCain doesn't get to decide whether this election will be fought on the basis of national security, or Iraq (his other signature issue, which cuts both ways for him) or on the economy. Circumstances will largely dictate that. And right now, the circumstances are these:
American economic insecurity IS the story of the current campaign, if not the future one, although as the onetime Man from Hope said (or as his campaign strategist James Carville did, back in 1992, it's the economy, stupid.)
That's why NAFTA is such a thorny issue (and if Team Obama is smart, they'll really begin sticking it to Hillary on that one...) And that's why a little story about Boeing will be the next shoe to drop on John McCain. From the AP this morning:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Angry Boeing supporters are vowing revenge against Republican presidential candidate John McCain over Chicago-based Boeing's loss of a $35 billion Air Force tanker contract to the parent company of European plane maker Airbus.
There are other targets for their ire — the Air Force, the defense secretary and even the entire Bush administration.
But Boeing supporters in Congress are directing their wrath at McCain, the Arizona senator and nominee in waiting, for scuttling an earlier deal that would have let Boeing build the next generation of Air Force refueling tankers. Boeing now will miss out on a deal that it says would have supported 44,000 new and existing jobs at the company and suppliers in 40 states.
"I hope the voters of this state remember what John McCain has done to them and their jobs," said Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., whose state would have been home to the tanker program and gained about 9,000 jobs.
"Having made sure that Iraq gets new schools, roads, bridges and dams that we deny America, now we are making sure that France gets the jobs that Americans used to have," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill. "We are sending the jobs overseas, all because John McCain demanded it."
The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. and its U.S. partner, Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman, won a competition with Boeing Feb. 29 to build the refueling planes in one of the biggest Pentagon contracts in decades. The unexpected decision has sparked outrage from union halls to the halls of Congress over the impact on U.S. jobs, prestige and national security. EADS and Northrop say about 60 percent of their tanker will be built in the U.S.
The trouble for McCain is that he has in the very recent past boasted about killing the Boeing deal, based on his never-ending crusade to battle Washington "pork." To be fair, people went to jail over a scandal involving a too-close-for-comfort relationship between Boeing officials and Air Force insiders in a position to place the construction deal. But McCain's holier-than-thou stance on his fellow Washingtonians' way of doing business could very soon come back to bite him in the electoral ass:
Rep. Todd Tiahrt, a Kansas Republican whose district includes a Boeing plant that could have gained hundreds of new jobs from the tanker program, said McCain's role in killing the earlier deal is likely to become an election issue. Both of the leading Democratic candidates for president, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have criticized the Air Force decision.
"I think we absolutely will hear more about it," Tiahrt said. "We'll hear it mostly from the Democrats and they have every right to be concerned."
McCain called such criticism off base.
"In all due respect to the Washington delegation, they vigorously defended the process before — which turned out to be corrupt — which would have cost the taxpayers more than $6 billion and ended up with people in federal prison," he said. "I'm the one that fought against that ... for years and brought down a corrupt contract."
Keith Ashdown, with the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Boeing executives who broke the law were to blame for the demise of the tanker contract — not McCain.
"This was theirs from day one," he said. "This idea that any lawmaker is to blame is a joke."
Still, Todd Donovan, a political science professor at Western Washington University, said McCain's opposition to Boeing could hurt him with voters in Washington and other states affected by the tanker program. Boeing would have performed much of the work in Everett, Wash., and Wichita, Kan., and used Pratt & Whitney engines built in Connecticut. Significant work also was slated for Texas.
"If he can be painted as somehow being associated with job losses ... it could hurt him on the margins," Donovan said.
Ya think?
The Boeing dust-up has been burning up talk radio, including the Ed Schultz show this week, and it won't stop there. Mixed up in this issue are a toxic brew of job losses, outsourcing (to France, no less) and the outsourcing of America's defenses abroad. McCain is going to have to choose between pushing his cost-cutting rep, or finally learning something about the economy.
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%>
Tell a friend
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'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
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sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
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%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
