McCain Talking Some Sense
It’s easy to forget just how controversial a figure John McCain was amongst the Republican Party, so firm has he been in stressing his jingoist credentials and especially with the selection of the base-appeasing Sarah Palin. But McCain was derided heavily for decades prior to his current position and although the partisans have largely come around (either a testament to their shamelessness or McCain’s power as a uniter, although perhaps it was Obama…) his position as a “RINO” (Republican In Name Only) seemed fairly secure for many years.
Although suitably bellicose to compensate John McCain remains the man who believes in global warming, does not believe in torture and loves the immigrant. This blatant opposition to the three grand shibboleths of the American right (the former new but increasingly vehement, the latter old and insidiously dynamic and the center vital to all apologists for Bush and perhaps the most important for the past two years) render him a rather strange choice for the representative of their party, but he has spoken little of them during the campaign.
Although he made some early campaign videos relating to climate change he has since demurred to the raucous cries of “Drill baby, drill!”, He has distanced himself but not disowned Bush: playing up the “Maverick” line but sticking away from the denunciations of a severity that only an eloquent torture victim confronting a torturer could deliver. But of the three his integrity to at least one has remained strong. Observe the following:
A stronger defence of the place of the endlessly (and ironically) maligned figure of the immigrant you are unlikely to hear leave an American politicians lips.
So the sleaze, the lies, the distortion, the fact that he backed a deranged war when it mattered, still does and is backing another, may well start another World War, has next to no knowledge of an economy that is currently collapsing and will need someone to stop it continuing, picked an utterly inexperienced, inappropriate and inadequate figure for his Vice President and is prone to breath-taking errors even in the subject which is supposedly his speciality, that all still matters?
Yes, but let us not simply demonise this man. There are instances where he threw his weight behind bloody folly and others where he has acted against the full onslaught of his party. He is a jingoist, but not some bland partisan who falls into line behind convenience (more than can be said for his distinctly new-found supporters).
Posted in: 2008 Election, An Election Like No Other