Un-President McCain

John McCain went on ABC's This Week and pretty much told the nation what we all ought to know by now, essentially saying, "I'm a pandering, hypocritical, unprincipled Republican weasel who'll do or say anything to get the Right Wing Christians to come out and vote for me in the primaries and there's absolutely no good reason anymore for Democrats or Independents to vote for me for President in 2008 so I guess I never will be President, darn."

McCain told George Stephanopoulos that he wants to see Roe vs. Wade overturned and that he wouldn't mind a Constitutional amendment banning abortion, which is very easy for him to be in favor of  because, as he knows, with the Democrats in charge of both Houses for at least the next two years, such an amendment will never make it out of committee.

Of course, we've been expected not to notice that such an amendment has never made it out of committee over the last 4 years while the Republicans have been running the show.

Republican Senators don't want to amend the Constitution.  They just want Right Wing anti-abortion types to think they do and to be able to blame Democrats for the fact that abortion never gets completely outlawed everywhere.

For some reason the Media used to present McCain as a social liberal---which, by the way, when you're talking about a Republican, is someone who will make sure that the sons and daughters of the rich and upper middle class continue to enjoy privileges that the rest of the country is denied, access to safe abortions, same sex marriage, fabulous and high status jobs for women.  As Scott Lemieux says:

the fact that McCain wouldn't dream of applying general bans on abortion to people in his social circles doesn't make him a pro-choicer; it makes him a Republican.   John McCain's daughter won't have a problem getting an abortion whether Roe is good law or not, but a lot of other women won't be so lucky. Social conservatism for thee-but-not-for-me is pretty much what social conservatism means in this country.

Now we know he's a different order and magnitude of hypocrite.

I wrote some posts last week in which I might have sounded as if I think McCain will be the next President.  (Here, here, and here.)

I only meant to write about him as the guy the smart money is on.  But I wouldn't even bet on him to be the Republican nominee.

You can all come back and laugh at me 26 months from today if President-elect McCain is stepping up to the bible to take his oath of office.  But I am convinced he won't win the election.

Even if the Democrats nominate Hillary.

John McCain's claim on our attention for the last 8 or 9 years has been based on his reputation as a maverick.

He's the straight-shooter, the last honest man, the true independent.  The one man who follows his own guiding star and sets his own course no matter which the prevailing winds are blowing.  McCain, we've been assured, by himself and his cheerleaders in the Media, is the guy who will put partisanship aside when the nation's best interests are on the line and do what's right.

The fact that McCain had always been fiercely partisan and extremely loyal, not just a good Republican, but a good Right Wing Republican, wasn't supposed to fool us.

We were supposed to believe that once he took office that President McCain would turn out to be what the country needed him to be and govern like a Rockefeller Republican, even like a Clintonian Democrat, except without the sex.

All you need to know to know what bullshit that was is that McCain voted for conviction during the Impeachment Crisis---on both articles!

Still the image of McCain as principled maverick stuck, and it might have carried him to the Presidency---if he'd run as an Independent in 2000 or 2004.

But it was only the Media who thought McCain was an independent.  McCain himself probably can't imagine himself as anything other than a Republican President, which is why I guess it's been so easy for him to swallow all of his pride and embrace George Bush and pander to the Religious Right and grovel before the corporate string-pullers and money-men who really run the Party.

He has done all this bootlicking in public too.  Over the last two years he has made a national spectacle of himself, providing the Democrats with an endless supply of quotes, images, and votes that they will happily use against him in 2008.

Not only will the Democrats use it, his Republican challengers will use it too, only in reverse.  For John McCain the campaign for President will be a year and half of trying to explain away the evidence of his hypocrisy.

By 2008 the blueing of the Midwest and the Rocky Mountain States will have accelerated.

By 2008 Democrats across the country will be even more confident, more partisan, and more energized.  More Independents will have signed on.  Many more former Republicans will have switched parties.  That was one other thing that helped McCain: the general sense that the Democrats were not up to taking on the Republicans.  An Independent man on a horse was needed to save the country.  McCain was the only alternative.  This last election proved that the Democratic Party is far from defeated.  It is on the rise.

By 2008 we will have had almost two more years of President Bush and by the time he's through I expect the Democrats will be able to nominate Terrell Owens and win.

Add this.  John McCain has never come across well on television.  He is not a great speaker.  He is short, he's going bald, he's dumpy, he's homely.  He's old and getting older.  And he does not look well.

But to get back to my main point, McCain's reputation as a maverick, undeserved as it was, was actually his main obstacle to getting elected President as a Republican.

The Right Wing true believers and Right Wing Christians who vote in the primaries didn't trust him.  He's had to prove himself to them but in doing so he's proved himself to the rest of the country too.  He's not what the Media Elites kept telling us he was.

Any of his cheerleaders in the Media who think that once he secures the nomination, he will cast aside the Right Wingers and show his true colors is not paying attention.

McCain will need the Right Wing base to come out in force for him to win.  But to get them to he will have to continue to show himself to be one of them and that will turn off Democrats and Independents who might have voted for John McCain the Maverick.

I'm convinced of this..

There are things that can happen in McCain's favor.

The Media have shown they don't mind selling us bills of goods.  They knew George Bush wasn't a moderate in 2000, but they were so eager to trash Al Gore that they eagerly pushed the supposed Compassionate Conservative.

They will be happy to continue to portray McCain as a moderate and an independent man, only they'll add, in asides, sotto voce, that he just has to wear a disguise to fool the yahoos.

And the leaders of the Religious Right have shown themselves to be as pragmatic and cynical as Karl Rove when it comes to getting their way.  They were willing to let George Bush pretend to be a moderate in public, while they went to their flocks and assured them that he was anything but, so they may be willing to let McCain pretend to cast them aside once he has the nomination shown up.

But I think it won't work because it's already not working.  I think McCain himself is sensing it's not.

I think he realizes he hasn't convinced the base he's a true believer; he's only convinced the rest of the country he might as well be.

His coming right out and saying that he's for a Constitutional amendment and overturning Roe vs. Wade was an admission that he's given up trying to hold on to his maverick reputation.  He's going to concentrate on stirring up the base and pray for rain.

It's as Lindsay says: "John McCain is not principled and not moderate. He's a power-grubbing old man who sees his last chance to be president slipping away."

Comments

[Kevin Wolf]

Frankly, there's a whole list of presumed candidates that I'd rather see disappearing instead of campaigning. McCain is one, John Kerry another.

[Kit Stolz]

Remember, it doesn't take much to be a maverick in the Republican party. One off-the-reservation opinion--that global warming might be problem--is usually more than enough. So it's relative, I think. McCain is not nearly the maverick he pretends to be (and he's doing everything possible to shed that reputation). But he can't help but be "different" by the total conformity standards of the Rovians.

But what really struck me from the above is the remark about McCain on television. It's true. He doesn't look good, and he doesn't look well. What's more, he can't fully hide his discomfort. The camera doesn't love him, and he doesn't love the camera. This I think will be a much bigger problem for him in 07 and 08 than his past reputation, deserved or not.

[merciless]

McCain told George Stephanopoulos that he wants to see Roe vs. Wade overturned and that he wouldn't mind a Constitutional amendment banning abortion, which is very easy for him to be in favor of because, as he knows, with the Democrats in charge of both Houses for at least the next two years, such an amendment will never make it out of committee.

It's also very easy for him to say, because, principled leader of the people that he is, he would never, ever, personally have an abortion.

Hypocritical wanker.

As for his looks? I always thought he looked like hell. He looked that way when he got home from Vietnam, and he looks that way now, only older. Also, he is not well. He has melanoma, has already had a couple of bouts with it, and that's the nasty stuff. It will kill you.

He's 70. He has a fearful temper and few debating skills. And now he's pandering so hard that democrats will have weeks' worth of videotape to run against him. I honestly don't know what he thinks he's accomplishing.

[sfmike]

That's a great line: "By 2008 we will have had almost two more years of President Bush and by the time he's through I expect the Democrats will be able to nominate Terrell Owens and win."

As for McCain's votes enabling the Bush administration to torture people in their "War on Terror" after having been tortured as a POW himself, he belongs in some strange circle of hell, perhaps the one he's living in now.

[DuWayne]

So my four year old insisted I read this post to him. He listened intently as I read the whole, entire post. I asked him to reflect.

"I, well - he's a republican?" "Yes." "Does he think you should be able to see doctors?" "No, not really." "And he wants to be the present?" "Yes, president." "Well, I think he's just silly. He probly doesn't think that our friends should get married 'cause they're queer. That's not fair - Everyones momma's or papa's should be marrying. He defnetly won't be present - Mericans aren't that stupid." "What about our current president." "Will Mericans be that stupid again? Even I learn fast - and I'm little."

Kind of off topic, but he's four.

[Katherine Hunter]

on Stephanopolis he looked like an elderly pink baby

[NeoconsOut!]

Also, I was kind of shocked (maybe I'm just out of the loop on this one) to
learn that John McCain is either a neocon himself and/or is in bed with them.
Shocked! SHOCKED I am!

http://www.rollingstone.com/nationalaffairs/?p=592

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15790605/site/newsweek/

Do you think ANY neocon candidate has a chance of winning the GOP primary, the White house? God, I hope not.

[Stefan Mosley]

By his flip-flopping conduct and brown-nosing George Bush, McCain has increasingly transformed himself into an unsubstantial and irrelevant pawn. He has beaten his "Vietnam POW" aura to death and has exhausted all he could pull out of it. As his ideas, his stance and his credibility continue to waver, he comes across embarrassingly incoherent and desperate. His newly released presidential fundraising numbers--showing two consecutive quarters of declining contributions--graphically display the lack of public's trust in him. His ideas are stale and dated, his scrmabling to fire 200 staff members and trying to re-ignite his campaign quite pitiful and sad.

[John Williams]

McCain lost any credibility he had with me when he voted against torture and then voted to suspend habeas corpus for SUSPECTED terrorists. J

[Uncle Sam]

If you were looking to fill an executive position, would you hire the candidate with excellent interviewing skills but no record of achievement?

[stefan Mosley]

to Uncle Sam: An articulate candidate with a fresh, REALISTIC approach to resolving the mess left behind by the bankrupt achievements of an "experienced" moron is always a better choice vs. more of the same [pathetic] leadership!