Story Time with E: Ignoring the Obvious – John McCain’s Downward Spiral

Posted by Enrique on 07.19.2007

McCain was the media’s favorite maverick in 2000, but in 2007 the Arizona Republican maverick’s presidential campaign seems to be in utter collapse. Where does the maverick McCain go from here? Maverick.

It's amazing how little credit a guy gets when he uses his Vietnam service in a presidential campaign. In 2000, McCain ran as the war hero that would transcend the GOP establishment, take on the special interests, and work with Democrats to solve America's problems. Yakity-yakity-yak. McCain's 2000 campaign had some success, mostly notably a double-digit victory over Dubya in the New Hampshire primary. The campaign also had one particularly exciting feature, for a Republican candidate – the admiration of the MainStream Media. You couldn't read or watch coverage of McCain in 2000 without the MSM noting that he didn't always toe the Republican line in the Senate, using the word "maverick" as often as possible.

I can't remember for the life of me what the hell was so "maverick" about McCain. All I remember is that the MSM was favorably disposed to McCain, which is the kiss of death in the GOP primary. Republican voters don't trust anyone that the MSM embraces. Other than that, I recall exactly two things that McCain did contrary to the GOP faithful circa 2000: he wrote the campaign finance reform bill, and he didn't want to cut taxes as much as Bush did. I vaguely recall McCain using the phrase "tax cuts for the rich" on more than one occasion, and without discernable irony in his voice – another no-no when it comes to winning over Republican voters. But that was seven years ago, and McCain doesn't have the same anti-establishment cred he once did.



The story so far…

McCain's 2008 presidential aspirations took a turn for the disastrous last week, when his campaign's manager, strategist, and chief of staff resigned. This week, his communications director and deputies, among other press staff, have resigned. And as a final insult, he has only $1m cash on hand. By comparison, Obama has over $30m cash on hand, and he's not even a war hero. McCain can't even hang with Mitt Romney, and Mitt's from the gay marriage paradise of Massachusetts. McCain was a POW, for Christ's sake. And compared to John Kerry, he's been marginally less shameless about exploiting his Vietnam service for political gain.

Speaking of McCain's war service – before I go on ridiculing him, I should acknowledge that John McCain is 1000 times the man I could ever hope to be. His plane was shot down, and he broke both arms and one leg during the crash. At the crash site, he was mobbed by locals who beat him and stripped his clothes. Once the North Vietnamese soldiers got him, he became a resident of the "Hanoi Hilton" for over five years, where he spent his time being interrogated and tortured on a semi-weekly basis. (Source: Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia, suck it, Britannica) In other words, McCain is one of the toughest, butchest motherfuckers in the history of humanity. I'm reminded of those Chuck Norris web sites that list all sorts of bizarre and hilarious facts like "Chuck Norris isn't afraid of the dark – the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris," etc. You notice how none of those web sites say "Chuck Norris spent five and a half years being tortured and took it like a man?" That's because Chuck Norris could never do that – but John McCain did. Compared to John McCain, I'm a simpering nancyboy – if I have a canker sore I call in sick to work. If John McCain ate me for breakfast, the dump he took later that day would be TWICE the man I am now.

I would be remiss not to acknowledge McCain's heroic masculinity if I'm going to post these pictures of him looking silly.


Mid-sentence, McCain remembers that he left his headlights on in the parking lot.


Whoa, Barbara Boxer really DOES have one hell of a rack.


Insert obvious "war flashback" joke here. I got nothing better.

And yet, despite all the man's done for this country, his campaign staff is abandoning McCain faster than the Democrats have abandoned Jesus. John McCain was once a media darling, the presumptive frontrunner, the man to beat. Now he's a few short months away from being a two-time also-ran. How did it go so wrong? For answers, who better to turn to than Arianna Huffington? No, seriously. On Sunday, Arianna Huffington-Posted an entire column devoted to McCain's campaign implosion. Her reasoning – McCain has lost it because of his support for the Iraq war:

John McCain's cratering campaign is an object lesson in how to kill a candidacy in three simple steps: 1) locate the biggest foreign policy disaster in U.S. history 2) embrace it 3) implode.

This Arianna quote has been making the rounds on the righty blogs this week because of its stunning inattention to the obvious. Speculation abounds as to Arianna's motive for writing such a transparently fatuous and deceptive column. After all, Huffington's not stupid. But like a lot of lefties, she has a compulsion to turn everything that happens in domestic politics into an argument against the Iraq war. Is she trying to push the MSM to embrace the idea that McCain's position on Iraq is the reason behind his campaign turmoil? Because there's no way Arianna could truly believe that. I have it in my head that she's deliberately trying to force this idea into the MSM-meme machine, in hopes that every AP story we read about McCain for the next few months will say "Some have said that McCain's staunch support for the unpopular Iraq war has been a factor in his flagging campaign." But maybe I'm giving Arianna too much credit.

The truth is, as usual, obvious to any sensible adult. No GOP primary voter is going to hold McCain's support of the Iraq war against him. However, they just might be inclined to hold the immigration bill he sponsored with Ted Kennedy against him. Once McCain became the face of Open Borders, he lost the Republican base forever. Now, some people believe that the grassroots GOP opposition to open borders and amnesty is motivated by nativism and/or racism – and sure, there's some of that. The "deport them all now" crowd is probably racist.

However, I think there's something to be said for the "secure the border first" crowd. If the McCain-Kennedy bill had called for building a wall, or a fence, or some kind of physical border with Mexico, I believe that non-racist GOP voters would have been cool with it (incidentally, in my experience, GOP voters aren't nearly as racist as they're given credit for). Once there's a nice, bigass fence on the Mexican border, I'm sure most regular Republican-type people would be open to talking about some kind of "guest worker" deal. But build the goddamned fence first. When Israel built a fence around the West Bank, it had great success in reducing suicide bombings. If it works for Israel – the epicenter of all Islamist terrorism – I don't see why it wouldn't work for us. And it's not merely vulgar demagoguery to say that a fence with Mexico would protect us from terrorism. This week, ABC reports:

The FBI is investigating an alleged human smuggling operation based in Chaparral, N.M., that agents say is bringing "Iraqis and other Middle Eastern" individuals across the Rio Grande from Mexico.

That's ABC, not Fox, mind you. If McCain had sponsored a bill building a bigass Mexican fence, conservatives would have given pro-choice Rudy the finger in the GOP primary, and Fred Thompson would still be on "Law & Order." No one wants to keep out the decent Mexican folks that just want a little piece of awesome American capitalism, but decent Americans wouldn't mind keeping out Muslim reactionaries that want to blow things up. In the end, McCain is paying the price of ignoring the obvious. And while "ignoring the obvious" seems to be a theme of recent presidential administrations, I think most voters would prefer a candidate who at least paid lip service to the obvious.

Which is odd for McCain, because when it comes to Iraq, he's the only candidate that states the mind-bogglingly obvious. I leave you with this quote from this week's almost-all-night-bring-the-troops-home-Reed-Levin-resolution debate in the Senate:

This resolution, incredibly, says that we can only – the mission is restricted to only fighting Al Qaeda. I guess that Al Qaeda will have to wear t-shirts that say that they're Al Qaeda. And I guess our troops are expected, if someone's planting an IED – to say "Excuse me, sir. Are you Al Qaeda or are you a Shi-ite? If you're a Shi-ite, go ahead and plant it."

Dammit, John. I wanted to love you. Why wouldn't you let me?