5 posts tagged “john mccain”
From the start, there have always been two separate but equal questions about race in this election. Is there still enough racism in America to prevent a black man from being elected president no matter what? And, will Republicans play the race card? The jury is out on the first question until Nov. 4. But we now have the unambiguous answer to the second: Yes.
McCain, who is no racist, turned to this desperate strategy only as Obama started to pull ahead. The tone was set at the Republican convention, with Rudy Giuliani’s mocking dismissal of Obama as an “only in America” affirmative-action baby. We also learned then that the McCain campaign had recruited as a Palin handler none other than Tucker Eskew, the South Carolina consultant who had worked for George W. Bush in the notorious 2000 G.O.P. primary battle where the McCains and their adopted Bangladeshi daughter were slimed by vicious racist rumors.
No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin’s convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was “regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.” In the ’60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.”
This is the writer who found his way into a speech by a potential vice president at a national political convention. It’s astonishing there’s been no demand for a public accounting from the McCain campaign. Imagine if Obama had quoted a Black Panther or Louis Farrakhan — or William Ayers — in Denver.
The operatives who would have Palin quote Pegler have been at it ever since. A key indicator came two weeks after the convention, when the McCain campaign ran its first ad tying Obama to the mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Rather than make its case by using a legitimate link between Fannie and Obama (or other Democratic leaders), the McCain forces chose a former Fannie executive who had no real tie to Obama or his campaign but did have a black face that could dominate the ad’s visuals.
There are no black faces high in the McCain hierarchy to object to these tactics. There hasn’t been a single black Republican governor, senator or House member in six years. This is a campaign where Palin can repeatedly declare that Alaska is “a microcosm of America” without anyone even wondering how that might be so for a state whose tiny black and Hispanic populations are each roughly one-third the national average. There are indeed so few people of color at McCain events that a black senior writer from The Tallahassee Democrat was mistakenly ejected by the Secret Service from a campaign rally in Panama City in August, even though he was standing with other reporters and showed his credentials. His only apparent infraction was to look glaringly out of place.
Could the old racial politics still be determinative? I’ve long been skeptical of the incessant press prognostications (and liberal panic) that this election will be decided by racist white men in the Rust Belt. Now even the dimmest bloviators have figured out that Americans are riveted by the color green, not black — as in money, not energy. Voters are looking for a leader who might help rescue them, not a reckless gambler whose lurching responses to the economic meltdown (a campaign “suspension,” a mortgage-buyout stunt that changes daily) are as unhinged as his wanderings around the debate stage.
From Frank Rich's scintillating editorial in the New York Times. Read the rest of his insight, because it's all good.
Something truly amazing happened last night. Sarah Palin, a virtual unknown to anyone in the lower 48, spoke at the Republican convention and positively electrified the stadium. While I only listened to the radio broadcast, I could tell simply from the explosive roar from the stands after her every sentence that she had found herself a pack of lapdogs. I imagined the Republican delegates with mouths agape and drooling in their seats -- much in the same way they've persistently mocked Obama supporters from the beginning -- as they must've felt they finally have a reason to get excited about this presidential campaign. Evidently John McCain realized he was getting nowhere on his own in the realm of motivation, so we can safely assume, at least for now, his VP pick has proven a successful gamble.
There's one thing I can say for sure: Sarah Palin's got sass. I couldn't help but shudder a bit at the sound of her newfound disciples wallowing in her fine-tuned litany of sarcastic one-liners. I'm beginning to think that sass is all you really need to win an election in this country -- that, and perhaps a repetition of falsehood and contradiction so seamless that folks start to see black as white. In her speech, Palin kept in step with an entire season of Republican campaigning built not so much on the merits of the campaigning Republicans, as mockery of the Republicans' opponents. She delivered nary a sentence of actual substance detailing McCain's own bid for the White House. And rather than speaking much on the specifics of her own short tenure as Alaskan "commander-in-chief", she opted to degrade the value of both Obama and Biden's public service as Senators and otherwise, managing to perpetuate a few lies about them in the process. To Sarah Palin, her nearly two years experience as a governor qualifies her ever so much more than any senator's work.
But is it not a tad ridiculous of Palin to so heartily vilify the work of senators when her own presidential candidate has only ever served as senator? Or could it be a tad ironic that these delegates must continuously summon the spirits of dead Republican heroes (Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Reagan) in an attempt to dispel the lingering specter of their current failed presidential tenure, who, I might add, served as governor himself (5 years) before wrangling his way into the oval office?
Would it be presumptuous of me to suggest that had the Republican delegates their druthers, they'd prefer to switch the head and tail of their presidential ticket? We'll have to wait and see just how uproarious those same delegates prove when McCain takes the stage tomorrow night, to deliver what surely will be the "high-road" speech, somehow unattatched to the endless spew of vitriol from Romney, Huckabee, and Palin's mouths. Somehow he supposed to rise above the staple of Republican campaigning: Trounce your opponent so much that you leave no time to talk about your own policies and experience, save in small, popular soundbytes. For as much as Republicans love to tout McCain's 26 years as senator and effective status as "maverick", they sure as hell don't spend any time extry explaining just what kind of reform he's helped bring about. (It's hard to visualize given his voting record, anyway.) Instead, they're bent on giving every gruesome detail of his time in the Hanoi prison camps, raising it as the banner of his indisputable character, while not failing to muffle and denounce any mention of his sordid disposal of his first wife upon his return to the United States for another, more picture-perfect trophy wife.
So, last night's Palin Parade truly begs the question: Why all the mindless fervor over a woman that hardly a soul knows? This is the very question every faithful Republican has been flinging at the Obama campaign since June. And while I've heard quite a bit from both unofficial and official sources about how Obama must be the Antichrist, I'm beginning to think the McCain/Palin better fits that ticket.
John McCain (The Beast or Antichrist) -- And I saw a beast coming out of the sea (26 years in Washington -- thoroughly soaked in it). He had ten horns and seven heads (Very ugly), with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. The beast I saw resembled a leopard (sun spots due to age), but had feet like those of a bear (he waddles) and a mouth like that of a lion (kind of like Charlie Chaplin). The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound (his near extinct primary bid last year... or the surgery he had to remove cancer from his head), but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was astonished and followed the beast. Men worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, "Who is like the beast? (he suffered five years in Hanoi) Who can make war against him?" (hardly a story critiquing him) The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for forty-two months. (Rev. 13:1-5)
Sarah Palin (The second Beast or False Prophet) -- Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth (Alaska). He had two horns like a lamb (horn-rimmed glasses), but he spoke like a dragon (hockey mom). He exercised all the authority of the first beast on his behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And he performed great and miraculous signs (getting Republicans excited), even causing fire to come down from heaven to earth in full view of men. Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the earth. He ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.
If you see other indications of the truth of this claim, let me know! We have to make sure everyone knows that John McCain is the antichrist and Sarah Palin is his prophetess!
Bush Made Permanent by Paul Krugman, borrowed from the New York Times
As the designated political heir of a deeply unpopular president — according to Gallup, President Bush has the highest disapproval rating recorded in 70 years of polling — John McCain should have little hope of winning in November. In fact, however, current polls show him roughly tied with either Democrat.
In part this may reflect the Democrats’ problems. For the most part, however, it probably reflects the perception, eagerly propagated by Mr. McCain’s many admirers in the news media, that he’s very different from Mr. Bush — a responsible guy, a straight talker.
But is this perception at all true? During the 2000 campaign people said much the same thing about Mr. Bush; those of us who looked hard at his policy proposals, especially on taxes, saw the shape of things to come.
And a look at what Mr. McCain says about taxes shows the same combination of irresponsibility and double-talk that, back in 2000, foreshadowed the character of the Bush administration.
The McCain tax plan contains three main elements.
First, Mr. McCain proposes making almost all of the Bush tax cuts, which are currently scheduled to expire at the end of 2010, permanent. (He proposes reinstating the inheritance tax, albeit at a very low rate.)
Second, he wants to eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which was originally created to prevent the wealthy from exploiting tax loopholes, but has begun to hit the upper middle class.
Third, he wants to sharply reduce tax rates on corporate profits.
According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the overall effect of the McCain tax plan would be to reduce federal revenue by more than $5 trillion over 10 years. That’s a lot of revenue loss — enough to pose big problems for the government’s solvency.
But before I get to that, let’s look at what I found truly revealing: the McCain campaign’s response to the Tax Policy Center’s assessment. The response, written by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former head of the Congressional Budget Office, criticizes the center for adopting “unrealistic Congressional budgeting conventions.” What’s that about?
Well, Congress “scores” tax legislation by comparing estimates of the revenue that would be collected if the legislation passed with estimates of the revenue that would be collected under current law. In this case that means comparing the McCain plan with what would happen if the Bush tax cuts expired on schedule.
Mr. Holtz-Eakin wants the McCain plan compared, instead, with “current policy” — which he says means maintaining tax rates at today’s levels.
But here’s the thing: the reason the Bush tax cuts are set to expire is that the Bush administration engaged in a game of deception. It put an expiration date on the tax cuts, which it never intended to honor, as a way to hide those tax cuts’ true cost.
The McCain campaign wants us to accept the success of that deception as a fact of life. Mr. Holtz-Eakin is saying, in effect, “We’re not engaged in any new irresponsibility — we’re just perpetuating the Bush administration’s irresponsibility. That doesn’t count.”
It’s the sort of fiscal double-talk that has been a Bush administration hallmark. In any case, it offers no answer to the principal point raised by the Tax Policy Center analysis, which has nothing to do with scoring: the McCain tax plan would leave the federal government with far too little revenue to cover its expenses, leading to huge budget deficits unless there were deep cuts in spending.
And Mr. McCain has said nothing realistic about how he would close the giant budget gap his tax cuts would produce — a gap so large that eliminating it would require cutting Social Security benefits by three-quarters, eliminating Medicare, or something equivalently drastic. Talking, as Mr. Holtz-Eakin does, about fighting waste and reforming procurement doesn’t cut it.
Now, Mr. McCain isn’t unique in making promises he has no way to pay for — the same can be said, to some extent, of the Democratic candidates. But Mr. McCain’s plan is far more irresponsible than anything the Democrats are proposing, and the difference in degree is so large as to be a difference in kind. Mr. McCain’s budget talk simply doesn’t make sense.
So what are Mr. McCain’s real intentions?
If truth be told, the McCain tax plan doesn’t seem to embody any coherent policy agenda. Instead, it looks like a giant exercise in pandering — an attempt to mollify the G.O.P.’s right wing, and never mind if it makes any sense.
The impression that Mr. McCain’s tax talk is all about pandering is reinforced by his proposal for a summer gas tax holiday — a measure that would, in fact, do little to help consumers, although it would boost oil industry profits.
More and more, Mr. McCain sounds like a man who will say anything to become president.
Am I the only one who sees a resemblance between Senator John McCain and Charlie Chaplin in A King in New York? (Particularly in Chaplin's face-lift scene, which i couldn't find a picture of...)
