McCain’s Flip-Flops: They Ain’t Exactly Jesus Creepers.
Got an interesting email yesterday from Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager. I should note that it wasn’t to me, as such; it’s not like I have connections, I just signed up for the McCain mailing list on the candidate’s website. Anyway, Davis says of Barack Obama:
Sadly, Senator Obama’s actions are just more politics as usual. I don’t know who should be more disappointed - the supporters whose faith in Senator Obama has already been betrayed, or the people who Senator Obama now expects to believe his new sales pitch. Either way, one thing is clear - Senator Obama has shown that he is just another politician.
And who’s calling the kettle black?
This isn’t to say that Obama is some new breed of politician; we turn those out with such alarming regularity that they’ve lost their irregularity (what would be truly new would be a politician playing the game and admitting it). What Davis’s statement smacks of is a man crying sour grapes, having been beaten at his own game. In a country with the collective attention span of a fruit fly, it’s easy to forget sometimes that much of Obama’s appeal derives from many of the same things that had people taking a serious look at McCain in 2000: what was, or at least appeared to have been, a willingness to buck the party regulars, to take unpopular stands, and to propose (believably, for a change) that government didn’t have to be an albatross around the necks of those it proposed to govern. Yes, I’m aware that there are some deep ideological and practical divisions between the two men; that said, I’d still argue that there are also some deep similarities between them.
And while we’re talking about “just another politician,” let’s take a look at John McCain. The new 2008 John McCain, with all sorts of features added over the last eight years. That peskily principled stance on the environment has been ditched in favor of expanded drilling that–by Conservative economists’ estimates–will have little economic impact, and that little bit will only come years from now. He’s flip-flopped on “agents of intolerance,” welcoming the likes of Hagee, Parsley, and Falwell into the fold. The New Republic, Balkinization, Crooks And Liars and Carpetbagger Report all list several more reversals of position, so I won’t list every last one of them here. To be fair, at least he’s consistent on abortion; he’s still against it, having already reversed his position in time for the primaries in 2000.
So McCain changes position, like any other politician. So he’s got more flip-flops to his credit than your average boardwalk stall on the Jersey Shore. Just the nature of the game, right? Except for the not-so-little fact that there’s one reversal, on one particular subject, that is particularly galling: McCain’s change of stance on torture.
The man and his supporters have played up his experience in Viet Nam for all it’s worth, to the point where patriotism has threatened to become as much bludgeon as badge of honor. By now there likely isn’t a man, woman, or child that doesn’t know of the torture that the Senator from Arizona suffered at the hands of the North Vietnamese more than thirty years ago. It’s a compelling narrative no matter how you look at it, and it ends up framing much of what the man says, stands for, and/or says he stands for.
So what are we to make of this? If McCain would willingly emasculate anti-torture legislation because he feels that there is some benefit to be had by torturing one’s prisoners, what should one conclude he learned from his own experience? Put slightly differently, if he believes that torture is so useful in obtaining useful, actionable intelligence, one could be forgiven for wondering what McCain himself might have given up under the prolonged and brutal treatment he received.
What if, on the other hand, we start from the assumption that McCain, motivated by a sense of duty, ideals, stubbornness, or patriotism, resisted? What if he gave out no information at all? What if he gave out information he knew to be false, just to buy himself a brief respite? Giving McCain the benefit of the doubt, it would seem, undermines the man’s own argument. In other words, no matter how thoroughly despicable the terrorists’ ideals and methods, one finds it difficult to believe that they may not, or would not, do the same that McCain likely did in the Hanoi Hilton.
Finally, what of the Commander in Chief test, that “threshold” of which we’ve heard so much? Not only the candidates, but also those who would vote for either man, ought to bear in mind that this “test” consists not just of the ability to lead a nation at war, but also is a measure of character, the candidates’ and the country’s. To paraphrase Mark, what shall it profit a man–either of them–to save the nation at the expense of its soul? What, then, have we saved, and what has become of us?
It’s one thing to define your highest ideals by what you’re willing to die, or at the very least sacrifice, for. At some point, before he was the Senator from Arizona, before even the slightest glimmer of Presidential aspiration, John McCain understood this. But when you frame those same ideals in terms of that for which you’re willing to kill or torture, or when you point to your willingness to subvert those ideals in the name of preserving them, you’ve cheapened them, and yourself. Anyone willing to do that ought not to lead this country, or any other.
Tags: Election 2008, John McCain, patriotism, torture