The case against John McCain
Arizona’s senior senator has a lingering image as an unusual politician—one who will take the hard stance for what’s right, or who will team up with the other side on difficult issues that are in the public’s best interest. The McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill and his moves toward comprehensive immigration reform are two good examples of this.
The trouble with John McCain is that this aspect of his career and personality is a tiny one. It is far outstripped by myriad and crippling personal and political flaws.
As McCain approaches a campaign for his fifth term as a senator, Arizonans have their best chance yet to throw this phony out.
If you’re curious about McCain, PHXated has created this handy guide to his decidedly unbrilliant career.
It’s a portrait of the real McCain, the one that’s been suppurating under the surface of his PR façade.
I. He’s a right-winger.
McCain’s moderate image is a fraud. As noted below, it surfaced only after he got his hand caught in the corruption cookie jar.
But given the chance he will always come back to his real values, which embrace the least-generous impulses in the American psyche; a belligerent, unthinking recklessness abroad; leaving the country’s most defenseless to fend for themselves; and, in general, resisting change any way possible.
He’s an abortion fetishist. (He even mocked the concept of the “health of the mother” during a presidential debate.) He’s a stalwart supporter of the American anti-sex brigade. (While having shown himself as quite the ladies man himself.) He’s against gay marriage and against even letting gays serve openly in the armed forces. (Again, after decades of behaving like a goon himself in the service.) He was doggedly against establishing a holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. He supported the vicious Nicaraguan contras.
He’s voted for tax cuts for the rich just about every chance he got, and he didn’t do anything to stop the anti-regulation brigade from giving a green light to the demolition derby that destroyed the country’s economy. He voted against the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. He voted to ban desecration of the flag, years after the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional; and he voted for the cruel bill that made it harder for people to file bankruptcy. (That was just before the economy his party destroyed drove untold thousands into the poorhouse.)
His incessant blabbering about the surge ignores the facts that a) we shouldn’t have been in Iraq in the first place and b) that the war had been utterly mismanaged to that point. He’s against withdrawing troops from Iraq, now, of course, and has always voted to confirm ideologues— Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, Alito and Roberts—to the Supreme Court.
II. He’s reckless.
Sarah Palin today is a wildly amusing character, and one who promises to disrupt Republican Party presidential race enjoyably in 2012.
But the idea of her being a 72–year-old man’s heartbeat away from the presidency is less funny.
Has any recent move by any politician of either party has had the potential to endanger America more?
Obama (himself a relatively untested figure) could have crashed and burned during the election. McCain could well be president right now—and be facing health problems.
The rash act was part of a pattern. During the 2008 crisis, as the economy tanked, McCain suddenly ended his campaign, cancelled an appearance on Letterman, made a detour to an interview with Katie Couric, and then rushed to Washington to… read some lines off an index card, as Henry Paulson recounts in his new memoir.
What a bozo, right?
Well, that’s the impression he gives to those of us on the left.
Maybe we’re being unfair.
Let’s hear from people closer to him.
Amazingly, those on the right have an even deeper sense of the man’s flaws. Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone:
At least three of McCain’s GOP colleagues have gone on record to say that they consider him temperamentally unsuited to be commander in chief. [Bob] Smith, the former senator from New Hampshire, has said that McCain’s “temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him.” Sen. Domenici of New Mexico has said he doesn’t “want this guy anywhere near a trigger.” And Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi weighed in that "the thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded.
Those are the guys on his side!
III. He’s a jerk to women, and he cheats on his wife.
McCain humiliated his first wife, whose name was Carol. Stories of his running around are legion.
Rolling Stone published “a devastating look back at McCain’s personal and political careers in 2008”: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain. The story was called “Make Believe Maverick" and was written by Tim Dickinson.
Here’s what he wrote about McCain’s two marriages:
If heroism is defined by physical suffering, Carol McCain is every bit her ex-husband’s equal. Driving alone on Christmas Eve 1969, she skidded out on a patch of ice and crashed into a telephone pole. She would spend six months in the hospital and undergo 23 surgeries. The former model McCain bragged of to his buddies in the POW camp as his “long tall Sally” was now five inches shorter and walked with crutches.
By any standard, McCain treated her contemptibly. Whatever his dreams of getting laid in Rio, he got plenty of ass during his command post in Jacksonville. According to biographer Robert Timberg, McCain seduced his conquests on off-duty cross-country flights — even though adultery is a court-martial offense. He was also rumored to be romantically involved with a number of his subordinates.
In the spring of 1979, while conducting official business for the Navy, the still-married McCain encountered Cindy Lou Hensley, a willowy former cheerleader for USC. Mutually smitten, the two lied to each other about their ages. The 24-year-old Hensley became 27; the 42-year-old McCain became 38. For nearly a year the two carried on a cross-country romance while McCain was still living with Carol: Court documents filed with their divorce proceeding indicate that they “cohabitated as husband and wife” for the first nine months of the affair.
Although McCain stresses in his memoir that he married Cindy three months after divorcing Carol, he was still legally married to his first wife when he and Cindy were issued a marriage license from the state of Arizona. The divorce was finalized on April 2nd, 1980. McCain’s second marriage — rung in at the Arizona Biltmore with Gary Hart as a groomsman — was consummated only six weeks later, on May 17th. The union gave McCain access to great wealth: Cindy, whose father was the exclusive distributor for Budweiser in the Phoenix area, is now worth an estimated $100 million.
His relationship with second wife Cindy isn’t any more attractive.
Here’s a story, from the Rolling Stone piece, about a campaign nearly twenty years ago:
During his 1992 campaign, at the end of a long day, McCain’s wife, Cindy, mussed his receding hair and needled him playfully that he was “getting a little thin up there.” McCain reportedly blew his top, cutting his wife down with the kind of language that had gotten him hauled into court as a high schooler: “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” Even though the incident was witnessed by three reporters, the McCain campaign denies it took place.
Think he’s mellowed? Here’s a passage from Game Change, the new book on the 2008 presidential campaign:
“FUCK YOU! FUCK, FUCK, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!!”
McCain let out the stream of sharp epithets, both middle fingers raised and extended, barking in his wife’s face. He was angry; she had interrupted him. Cindy burst into tears, but, really, she should have been used to it by now.”
IV. He’s a crummy senator.
Arizona by most social metrics is a honorary member of the Deep South. It could use a little federal help to evolve its economy and try to join the modern world, the way other backward states do.
McCain, with his twisted view of how politics should work, hasn’t been a help.
Here’s Amy Silverman, New Times’ resident expert on McCain:
(McCain’s e)fforts to stop pork-barreling are sadly cosmetic, as well. First off, the earmarks that groups like Taxpayers for Common Sense rail against account for only 1 percent of the federal budget. One percent.
And it’s not all bridges to nowhere. McCain, who used to fight for projects like a regional airport for metropolitan Phoenix [. . .] now refuses to fund anything for the state. And his sheep, er, colleagues — Arizona congressmen John Shadegg and Jeff Flake — have followed suit. As a result, Arizona ranked dead last in earmark funding in the past fiscal year.
He’s not even good on foreign policy. Winning in Iraq would be “easy,” he said before the war. The U.S. would be greeted as liberators!
V. He’s a hypocrite and a sophist.
He fishes for votes amongst the worst most moralistic Americans, while he’s been a skirt-chaser his whole life. He abuses his wives and has cheated on at least one of them, yet he acts morally superior to gay men and women who tried to build their own lives together.
He will argue whatever side of any issue benefits him at the time.
Here he is recently on Meet the Press, talking about the “reconciliation” option on the recent health care bill:
SEN. McCAIN: I objected to that because I believed, as Robert Byrd does, that, that we should not be addressing these issues through 51 votes.
MR. GREGORY: But, Senator, you have voted for bills through reconciliation nine times since 1989.
SEN. McCAIN: Yes. Yes, I have voted for them, but I objected strenuously […]
I voted for them, but I objected strenuously!
McCain’s never shown any compassion for drug addicts. Tens of thousands of harmless drug offenders rot in the nation’s jails, costing taxpayers a fortune and creating untold further societal costs in ruined lives.
.. well, except for one drug addict: His wife Cindy, who got hooked on pills and stole them from her charity to feed her addiction.
There are people who have done a lot less sitting in Joe Arpaio’s Tent City-–or lying forgotten in other hell holes across the country. (A full Washington Post story on the affair is here.)
VI. He’s also intellectually dishonest, willing to contort himself into rhetorical knots to stick to his atavistic, hateful politics.
Here’s a good example.
Four years ago, when the military’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy was up for review, he said, “The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy,’ then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it.”
As you might have read, the leadership of the military did just that in recent weeks; the chairman of the joint chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, said “allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.” He was joined by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican—and a few weeks later, General David Petraeus said the policy should be reconsidered as well.
In response, McCain told the brass: “I’m extremely disappointed in your statement…. At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the ’don’t ask don’t tell’ policy. I’m happy to say we still have a Congress of the United States that would still have to pass a law to repeal ’don’t ask don’t tell.’”
A gentler man, one who’s psyche was consistent with the genial soul who warbled about “God’s children” n the debate over immigration reform, would use the general’s change of heart as a learning moment for his bigoted constituency. Instead, McCain, tacking right to fend off Hayworth’s primary challenge, is playing to their worst instincts.
And in a recent issue of Newsweek, McCain was asked about his maverick image. His reply:
“I never considered myself a maverick.”
VII. He’s a champion flip-flopper
Since McCain has had to contort himself philosophically each time he’s run for national office, he has a record as a flip-flopper the likes of which Washington has very rarely seen. Dickinson in Rolling Stone:
When challenged on The View, McCain again defied those who accuse him of flip-flopping. “What specific area have I quote ‘changed’?” he demanded. “Nobody can name it.”
In fact, his own statements show that he has been on both sides of a host of vital issues: the Bush tax cuts, the estate tax, waterboarding, hunting down terrorists in Pakistan, kicking Russia out of the G-8, a surge of troops into Afghanistan, the GI Bill, storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, teaching intelligent design, fully funding No Child Left Behind, offshore drilling, his own immigration policy and withdrawal timelines for Iraq.
VIII. He’s a creep.
Besides the way he treats the women he sleeps with, he’s a jerk to regular folks as well. Amy Silverman, in New Times, has the tale of what happened to Rose Mofford, who ascended to the governor’s office after the impeachment of Evan Mecham, when she went to DC to testify before McCain’s committee. It’s a complicated story, but basically Mofford, who’d been governor for all of eight days, got blindsided by some hostile questions from a senator been fed them by McCain.
Silverman, quoting a friend of McCain’s:
“During lunch, McCain said, almost with mischievous glee, that he had slipped some highly technical questions to [James McClure] to ask Mofford — questions she wouldn’t be prepared to answer or expected to answer.
“Flabbergasted, I asked McCain why would he want to sabotage Mofford’s testimony, when in fact the CAP was the nonpartisan pet of Republicans and Democrats — such as far-left Udall and far-right Goldwater — since its inception.
“His reply, as near as I remember, was, ’I’ll embarrass a Democrat any time I get the chance.’
These tendencies are lifelong ones. Rolling Stone:
McCain was not only a lousy student, he had his father’s taste for drink and a darkly misogynistic streak. The summer after his sophomore year, cruising with a friend near Arlington, McCain tried to pick up a pair of young women. When they laughed at him, he cursed them so vilely that he was hauled into court on a profanity charge.
McCain’s admittance to Annapolis was preordained by his bloodline. But martial discipline did not seem to have much of an impact on his character. By his own account, McCain was a lazy, incurious student; he squeaked by only by prevailing upon his buddies to help him cram for exams. He continued to get sauced and treat girls badly. Before meeting a girlfriend’s parents for the first time, McCain got so shitfaced that he literally crashed through the screen door when he showed up in his white midshipman’s uniform.”
IX. Even his military career has been overhyped.
McCain was shot down over Vietnam and spent years in a Vietnamese prison. He is routinely called a hero for this terrible ordeal. We’re not going to argue that, but it’s also true that his primary status was, like the hundreds of thousands of US serviceman at the time (not to mention millions of Vietnamese) not so much a hero as a victim—indeed, one grievously injured, abused, denied medical attention and left with lifelong physical impairments.
That said, as Tim Dickinson writes, McCain was a crummy serviceman. He crashed two planes while on active duty, and another near the end of his career. Since he was the son of an admiral, he was given a pass for this record, which would have permanently grounded a regular flyer.
Dickinson rounds up all the other tales about what a crappy sailor McCain was.
He repeatedly blew up in the face of his commanding officer. It was the kind of insubordination that would have gotten any other midshipman kicked out of Annapolis. But his classmates soon realized that McCain was untouchable. Midway though his final year, McCain faced expulsion, about to “bilge out” because of excessive demerits. After his mother intervened, however, the academy’s commandant stepped in. Calling McCain “spoiled” to his face, he nonetheless issued a reprieve, scaling back the demerits. McCain dodged expulsion a second time by convincing another midshipman to take the fall after McCain was caught with contraband.
As for his heroism as a POW, that too is a façade. McCain endured a great deal of cruelty and deserves our respect and compassion for that ordeal. But the “name, age and serial number” image isn’t true. Dickinson:
Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. “I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital,” he later admitted pleading with his captors. McCain now insists the offer was a bluff, designed to fool the enemy into giving him medical treatment. In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. “I had to tell them,” he insisted to Dramesi, “or I would have died in bed.”
Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain’s service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot’s behavior as heroic — “he wasn’t exceptional one way or the other” — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. “This business of my country before my life?” Dramesi says. “Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he’d be dead.”
X. Mr. Ethical only came into existence after Mr. Business as Usual got caught:
After he was sent to Washington, McCain and his family got in tight with Charles Keating, one of the poster kids in the savings and loan scandal.
Rolling Stone:
McCain and his family took at least nine free trips at Keating’s expense, and vacationed nearly every year at the mogul’s estate in the Bahamas. There they would spend the days yachting and snorkeling and attending extravagant parties in a world McCain referred to as “Charlie Keating’s Shangri-La.” Keating also invited Cindy McCain and her father to invest in a real estate venture for which he promised a 26 percent return on investment. They plunked down more than $350,000.
When the feds began closing in on Keating, McCain and four other senators went in to plead the goon’s case.
The senators who participated in the effort would come to be known as the Keating Five.
“Senate historians were unable to find any instance in U.S. history that was comparable, in terms of five U.S. senators meeting with a regulator on behalf of one institution,” says Bill Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, who attended the second meeting. “And it hasn’t happened since.”
In other words, Mr. Rectitude only got that way after nearly destroying his career by running around with a crook who, with some valuable clutch assists from McCain, cost U.S. taxpayers $3 billion.
Are there really only ten reasons to dump McCain? I’d love to hear your further nominations. And as always, corrections, criticisms and comments are welcome.