Posted by
on Thursday, January 04, 2007 2:04:19 PM
Did somebody hand John McCain a shovel recently? I only ask because his new profile in Vanity Fair proves that if you give the man a shovel, he will dig himself his own political grave. (HT: Hugh Hewitt)
Here are some key 'graphs: (Emphasis mine)
It is three weeks before midterm elections that will prove to be a decidedly mixed bag for McCain. His party will experience the electorate's repudiation of the war in Iraq, which McCain has always supported, and at the same time the voters will repudiate the cozy and corrupt Washington culture as a whole, which McCain has always loathed. Matthews wants to know McCain's views on the prevalence of gay people in all walks of life, a subject whose predicate is the scandal involving Representative Mark Foley and his come-hither instant-messaging with congressional pages. "Should gay marriage be allowed?," Matthews asks.
"I think that gay marriage should be allowed, if there's a ceremony kind of thing, if you want to call it that," McCain answers, searching in vain for the less loaded phrases he knows are out there somewhere, such as "commitment ceremony" or "civil union." "I don't have any problem with that, but I do believe in preserving the sanctity of the union between man and woman." It may not be clear just what McCain is trying to say, but it's easy to see how his words could be skewed in a direction that the Republican right might not like at all.
First of all, the Constitutional Amendment defining marriage is supposed to prevent out of control judges from simply writing law as they see fit. Marriage isn't a right enumerated in the Constitution, and contrary to the beliefs of some liberal-minded judicial scholars, no court case has deemed marriage a right. Occasionally, they cite Loving v. Virgina as the basis for this misinterpretation, and they draw it from this paragraph in the concluding opinion:
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
The above is dealing with the question of interracial marriage, which under the Constitution, is prohibited. Refusing a marriage based on race directly violates the protections put in place when it comes to minorities, and applies to all races. The question of gay marriage doesn't reside on this argument. It sits int he realm of something that has NEVER been acceptable, or protected by law.
More on McCain:
But God knows McCain is trying. He began this mid-October day in Sioux City, appearing at a fund-raising Siouxland Breakfast for Representative Steve King, an immigration hard-liner. Recently he had called McCain an "amnesty mercenary" for daring to work with Senator Ted Kennedy on a compromise bill that would provide an eventual path to citizenship for the millions of immigrant workers already in the United States illegally. A day earlier, in Milwaukee, in front of an audience of more sympathetic businessmen, McCain had been asked how debate over the immigration bill was playing politically. "In the short term, it probably galvanizes our base," he said. "In the long term, if you alienate the Hispanics, you'll pay a heavy price." Then he added, unable to help himself, "By the way, I think the fence is least effective. But I'll build the g*dd*mned fence if they want it."
"I'm willing to negotiate anything," McCain tells the breakfast crowd in Sioux City, explaining that there is no way the millions of illegal aliens now here can be sent back to their countries of origin. But he acknowledges that anything seen as amnesty for illegals is "totally unacceptable, particularly to our Republican base." Later, McCain tells me that Congressman King "really knows this issue," but he sounds as if he is trying to persuade himself as much as me.
The arrogance of this man is positively astounding. If we want it, he'll give in and build it, grudgingly? Excuse me, but as an elected representative of the State of Arizone--the state my wife, Marcie, and I reside in--it's his job to listen to us. And we know the ravages of illegal immigration on the state. $1.3 billion is tossed each year, on average, down a bottomless rat hole for medical expenses, incarceration, and welfare monies. Who picks up that tab. It sure isn't the illegals. It's the taxpayer. They're a drain on the economy in more ways than one, and it's even more irritating when we don't have effective measures in place to deter their entry into the US.
That's what the fense is about, and McCain clearly doesn't get it. We have wide-open, porous borders, and an overworked, underfunded border patrol. The notion the president has presented--that these people are a boon to the nation because they do work that Americans don't want to do--is pure fantasy. There are steps that can be taken to end that lie, and it starts with reforming the welfare system, and getting people off of the taxpayer dole. Money is money, and if they means you flip burgers in the morning, and work as a janitor in the evening, then you do it. The idea that we can just continue to give out "free" handouts to the illegals, and the lazy is idiotic. We, as a society, can't continue to live like this. The taxpayers are fed up with how their tax dollars are spent, and McCain's support for the legislation he and Ted Kennedy are working on shows where his stripes are. He isn't for enforcing and refomring our immigration problems. He's for continuing the status quo.
Then McCain connects with Darrell Kearney, the conservative finance director of the Iowa Republican Party. Following Larson's instructions, McCain tells Kearney, a former Steve Forbes supporter, that he'd love to go to the party's next Lincoln Day dinner. But his words come out sounding as if he's inviting himself, and the conversation seems strained. "I see," McCain says. "Well, sounds exciting." From my perch in the backseat, it doesn't sound exciting at all. It sounds as if Kearney has ticked McCain off somehow. McCain flips the phone closed and tells Larson, "That's enough!"
A few minutes pass and Larson asks how the conversation with Kearney went. "Fair," McCain says, in a tone that invites no further discussion. "Fair."
While this wasn't a blow up, it paints a picture that we have become all to familiar with. John McCain likes the moniker the media gave him--the "maverick." But all too often his ego tends to get in the way. As for the assumption that he sounds like he was inviting himself, can we see it any other way. Anyone remember the GOP governor's meeting in Florida on 1 December? McCain invited himself much to the dismay of Gov. Mitt Romney, himself a contender for the GOP nomination in 2008. This is the arrogance I spoke of earlier, and it's the same sort of behavior that ticks off a good majority of the GOP base.
But the biggest questions of all are whether, by forcing himself to become some kind of something he just isn't, John McCain can win the presidency to begin with, and would he consider himself to be worthy of the honor if he did.
Some of McCain's oldest friends and supporters confess that they don't know the answers, but that they worry about the questions. Will McCain's understandable effort to bend a little here and bow a little there—to placate the most conservative elements of his party, who play a disproportionate role in the nominating process—get him all twisted up before he ever gets to face the general electorate that polls suggest admires him so?
Point blank, no one likes a panderer. This is why Hillary is being shredded by her own party right now. She's not "authentic" in moderating herself, and neither is he. The American public prefers an honest politician--someone like Ronald Reagan who truly meant what he said, and said what he meant. And in the end, Reagan always appealed to the people if he had problems with the opposition in Congress. McCain is a moderator. Above, in his own words, he stated "I'm willing to negotiate anything." That's not a president. A president is supposed to lead, not moderate. Yes, they have to, at times, but to state you're willing to negotiate "anything" is a mistake that the voters won't like to hear. It sounds like he's pandering to which ever side screams the loudest instead of doing what's right.
In a thousand and one ways, John McCain remains irresistible—to anyone who ever screwed up in school, fell short of expectations, blew his stack, or gave his all to a losing cause. He is a born rebel, who once confessed that he had spent the bulk of his time at the Naval Academy "being made an example of, marching many miles of extra duty for poor grades, tardiness, messy quarters, slovenly appearance, sarcasm, and multiple other violations of Academy standards." In his third year at Annapolis, he was so fed up he considered joining the French Foreign Legion, until, he said, he realized it required an enlistment of eight years. ...
Now that is telling. I know some may criticize me for bringing this part up, but his habits at Annapolis speak volumes to his character. Was this because he thought he could skate by because of his family's long tradition in the Navy? (Both John, Sr. and John, Jr. were Navy admiralsin World War II and Vietnam, respectively.) His attitude at Annapolis--his poor grades, sloppy appearance, etc.--tell a lot about a man who may not have been as committed to his duty as some would expect. And in this assessment, we have to question how he would handle the job of being president.
In mixed company, he does not shrink from a good "g*dd*mn" or two, and in male company, considerably coarser discourse comes easily to his lips (cocky jet jockey that he once was). He is a man of strong opinions, strongly expressed. "Most current fiction bores the sh*t out of me," he says in a small plane somewhere over New England. In front of an audience of Republican worthies in Appleton, Wisconsin, he calls the leader of North Korea a "pip-squeak in platform shoes," and in seconding my view that Islamabad has limited charms, he volunteers that the Pakistani capital "sucks." At a nascar race in New Hampshire, he introduces Bobby Allison, "the greatest driver in the history of racing," to one of the journalists following him that day, declaring, "This is Adam Nagourney, New York Times. They're a Communist paper, but he's O.K." He introduces his friend Senator John Sununu, of New Hampshire, son of the famously bumptious former White House chief of staff, to a group of supporters by saying, "You can be very proud of him, and thank God he inherited his mother's temperament." To a gathering of businessmen he says, "I want to keep health-care costs down until I get sick, and then I don't give a g*dd*mn," and to a group of college kids waiting to have their pictures taken with him, he growls good-naturedly, "All right, you little jerks!" On a charter jet above Iowa, he reads aloud a headline from USA Today: Actor [Wesley] Snipes faces indictment on tax fraud charges, then mutters, "All our childhood heroes—shattered!"
Ask yourselves right now if this is the sort of man you want in the white House. His jokes stink. And his abrasive attitude towards the general public is uncalled for. We are the people. We are the power in America, and the last thing we need is someone like Mccain making foot-in-mouth comments like this. While it's nice to see him relaxed, it doesn't change the fact that overall he has an air of disdain for his constituents. The entire article is rife with passages like the ones I've cited above. It'a ten page profile, and the more you read, the more likely you're going to be ticked by the end of it. I was, but I chalk it up to the typical McCain idiocy, and self-adulation.
This man has been our senator for many years, and there are a few things we've learned about him. He is arrogant. He puts himself on a platform far above the people who elected him. He's never been afraid to cut a deal with the opposition in the Senate if it avoids a well-deserved fight. He has sided against the Constitution on two very important issues--free speech (political speech, which is the cornerstone of the First Amendment), and the powers of the president under Article II. And above all, he is willing to basically wh*re himself out to the media or whatever special interest groups that best serve his needs, rather than the needs of the nation. In short, folks, this man is not the right man for the presidency in '08, and the sooner the nation gets this through it's thick skull, the better off we'll all be.
Publius II