Woe is McCain: Bad Temper, Bad Foreign Policy

I couldn't help but be disturbed by this recent ten-page article in Rolling Stone called "Make Believe Maverick." It goes into John McCain's policy stances, but also his character, tracing forward from when he was young. It highlights the ways he has skated by because of his family name, from getting into college to keeping his Navy "wings" after multiple crashes. I'd encourage anyone who's thinking of voting his way Tuesday to read the entire article (you can also view a short video Rolling Stone did in conjunction with the article here). I wanted to paste the section on his foreign policy from the article below, but before I do, here are a few quick lines on his infamous temper:

"Over the years, John McCain has demonstrated a streak of anger so nasty that even his former flacks make no effort to spin it away. 'If I tried to convince you he does not have a temper, you should hang up on me and ridicule me in print,' says Dan Schnur, who served as McCain's press man during the 2000 campaign. Even McCain admits to an 'immature and unprofessional reaction to slights' that is 'little changed from the reactions to such provocations I had as a schoolboy.'...

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. 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.' "

Now, here's the pretty damning section on McCain's foreign policy stances over the years, though I believe it fairly discusses how he was more moderate in the past:

"The myth of John McCain hinges on two transformations — from pampered flyboy to selfless patriot, and from Keating crony to incorruptible reformer — that simply never happened. But there is one serious conversion that has taken root in McCain: his transformation from a cautious realist on foreign policy into a reckless cheerleader of neoconservatism.

'He's going to be Bush on steroids,' says Johns, the retired brigadier general who has known McCain since their days at the National War College. 'His hawkish views now are very dangerous. He puts military at the top of foreign policy rather than diplomacy, just like George Bush does. He and other neoconservatives are dedicated to converting the world to democracy and free markets, and they want to do it through the barrel of a gun.'

McCain used to believe passionately in the limits of American military power. In 1993, he railed against Clinton's involvement in Somalia, sponsoring an amendment to cut off funds for the troops. The following year he blasted the idealistic aims of sending U.S. troops to Haiti, taking to the Senate floor to propose an immediate withdrawal. He even started out a fierce opponent of NATO air strikes on Serbia during the war in the Balkans.

But such concerns went out the window when McCain began gearing up to run for president. In 1998, he formed a political alliance with William Kristol, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, who became one of his closest advisers. Randy Scheunemann — a hard-right lobbyist who was promoting Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi — came aboard as McCain's top foreign-policy adviser. Before long, the senator who once cautioned against 'trading American blood for Iraqi blood' had been reborn as a fire-breathing neoconservative who believes in using American military might to spread American ideals — a belief he describes as a 'sacred duty to suffer hardship and risk danger to protect the values of our civilization and impart them to humanity.' By 1999, McCain was championing what he called 'rogue state rollback.' First on the hit list: Iraq.

Privately, McCain brags that he was the 'original neocon.' And after 9/11, he took the lead in agitating for war with Iraq, outpacing even Dick Cheney in the dissemination of bogus intelligence about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. 'There's other organizations besides Mr. bin Laden who are bent on the destruction of the United States,' he warned in an appearance on Hardball on September 12th. 'It isn't just Afghanistan. We're talking about Syria, Iraq, Iran, perhaps North Korea, Libya and others.' A few days later, he told Jay Leno's audience that 'some other countries' — possibly Iraq, Iran and Syria — had aided bin Laden.

A month after 9/11, with the U.S. bombing Kabul and reeling from the anthrax scare, McCain assured David Letterman that 'we'll do fine' in Afghanistan. He then added, unbidden, 'The second phase is Iraq. Some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq.'

Later that month on Larry King, McCain raised the specter of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction before he peddled what became Dick Cheney's favorite lie: 'The Czech government has revealed meetings, contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mohamed Atta. The evidence is very clear. . . . So we will have to act.' On Nightline, he again flogged the Czech story and cited Iraqi defectors to claim that 'there is no doubt as to [Saddam's] avid pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. That, coupled with his relations with terrorist organizations, I think, is a case that the administration will be making as we move step by step down this road.'

That December, just as U.S. forces were bearing down on Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora, McCain joined with five senators in an open letter to the White House. 'In the interest of our own national security, Saddam Hussein must be removed from power,' they insisted, claiming that there was 'no doubt' that Hussein intended to use weapons of mass destruction 'against the United States and its allies.'

In January 2002, McCain made a fact-finding mission to the Middle East. While he was there, he dropped by a supercarrier stationed in the Arabian Sea that was dear to his heart: the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the giant floating pork project that he had driven through over President Carter's veto. On board the carrier, McCain called Iraq a 'clear and present danger to the security of the United States of America.' Standing on the flight bridge, he watched as fighter planes roared off, en route to Afghanistan — where Osama bin Laden had already slipped away. 'Next up, Baghdad!' McCain whooped.

Over the next 15 months leading up to the invasion, McCain continued to lead the rush to war. In November 2002, Scheunemann set up a group called the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq at the same address as Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. The groups worked in such close concert that at one point they got their Websites crossed. The CLI was established with explicit White House backing to sell the public on the war. The honorary co-chair of the committee: John Sidney McCain III.

In September 2002, McCain assured Americans that the war would be 'fairly easy' with an 'overwhelming victory in a very short period of time.' On the eve of the invasion, Hardball host Chris Matthews asked McCain, 'Are you one of those who holds up an optimistic view of the postwar scene? Do you believe that the people of Iraq, or at least a large number of them, will treat us as liberators?'

McCain was emphatic: 'Absolutely. Absolutely.'

Today, however, McCain insists that he predicted a protracted struggle from the outset. 'The American people were led to believe this could be some kind of day at the beach,' he said in August 2006, 'which many of us fully understood from the beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking.' McCain also claims he urged Bush to dump Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. 'I'm the only one that said that Rumsfeld had to go,' he said in a January primary debate. Except that he didn't. Not once. As late as May 2004, in fact, McCain praised Rumsfeld for doing 'a fine job.'

Indeed, McCain's neocon makeover is so extreme that Republican generals like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft have refused to endorse their party's nominee [After this article was written, Powell endorsed Obama]. 'The fact of the matter is his judgment about what to do in Iraq was wrong,' says Richard Clarke, who served as Bush's counterterrorism czar until 2003. 'He hung out with people like Ahmad Chalabi. He said Iraq was going to be easy, and he said we were going to war because of terrorism. We should have been fighting in Afghanistan with more troops to go after Al Qaeda. Instead we're at risk because of the mistaken judgment of people like John McCain.' "

Again, the full ten-page article can be read here.

Woe is McCain: Impulsive Decision Maker

Bush's reckless comments and decisions are world-renown. Indeed, he was voted into office in part because he seemed more like a guy you could have a beer with than someone who had the care and thoughtfulness to make decisions about war and diplomacy, energy use and economics, etc. McCain and his VP choice, Sarah Palin, appear to be following suit (see Palin's comment about how she "didn't hesitate" and didn't "blink" when asked to be McCain's VP, and what looked like a rushed vetting process of her by McCain). The problem has come into full view with the most recent economic crisis and McCain's helter-skelter decisions surrounding it, including the melodramatic suspension of his campaign. Check out this well-put article on the subject (it's brief), where the writer points out the following:

"The solution was to try to make it look as if McCain were leading the heroic effort to save the American way of life. To do this, he had to portray the negotiations over [an economic] rescue plan -- which had been making orderly progress -- as stalled and in shambles...McCain succeeded in focusing attention on himself, but not necessarily in a good way. Voters may see this not as an illustration of brave leadership but as another example of McCain's 'ready, fire, aim' approach to dealing with any crisis. Putting himself at the center of events -- making any situation all about him -- is more than a political tactic for McCain."

This Washington Post article, by conservative columnist George Will, analyzes some more of McCain's erratic approach to the economic crisis. But for a more in-depth look at McCain's decision-making process (or lack of process), take a look at this PBS close-up video of him, done a few weeks ago. Then, for comparison, take a look at the piece done on Obama, where they asked the same question of how he makes his decisions. It's part of a larger series they are doing on how the candidates would lead, how they handle disappointment, and so on, that I'll be interested to watch some more of.

But the question of how one makes decisions is an important one. Are there usually lots of sides to an issue, and lots of research to be done before choosing A over B? What about when you get into presidential-level decisions? Do we want someone who, in the case of McCain always "goes with his gut" and, as the PBS piece points out, tries to make the quickest decision possible at times? The PBS piece quotes McCain saying, "I don't torture myself over decisions. I make them as quickly as I can, quicker than the other fellow, if I can. Often, my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint."

To be sure, this is not a black and white argument, as "gut-level" decisions can result in good, honest stances, as has been the case at times with McCain; but, trusting one's judgment--which is often what is meant by "gut-level" decision-making--does not mean one can't follow a careful, researched process in approaching a decision. The process can provide all of the information on the possible positions, allowing the most accurate judgment call to be made; at that point, after all of the relevant points have been thoroughly considered, a decision "from the gut" could be fair and even preferable--but McCain is not known for gathering those important outside perspectives prior to making a decision. That's even supported by those on the right, such as Norman Ornstein from the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who, in an interview for the above PBS piece, explained McCain's decision-making process in the following way:

"John McCain is a fighter pilot. A lot of his persona comes from being a fighter pilot.

This is a man who not only constantly questions authority, but is fond of making last-minute, from-the-gut, impulsive, risk-taking decisions, and believing to his bones that there may be a risk here, but it will pay off.

An impulsive decision-making style is fine if you're riding a jet. An impulsive decision-making style is fine if you're piloting a jet in combat [though I, Brendan, would interject that it wasn't fine with the three plane crashes McCain was responsible for as a navy pilot]. It's fine if you're a senator where the consequences are not going to be that long-lasting. It's a real question mark when you move into the presidency."

Decisions about what to eat for dinner, or other basic-level decisions, do not necessarily require or allow for a careful decision-making process--but bombing a country? Dealing with a financial crisis? Choosing a successor? Choosing folks to oversee entire swaths of the country and its governance, such as the Secretary of Commerce, Energy, Defense, or even Supreme Court Justices? Those decisions shouldn't be made on the fly. We've felt the effects of exactly that with the type of decision-making that has occurred under the Bush Administration; I've been surprised to hear about seemingly safe corners of the government falling into disarray or corruption, or both--from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) (and that doesn't even go into the areas of more obvious corruption and disarray, such as the selling and subsequent mishandling of the Iraq war, the use of no-bid contracts in Iraq and otherwise, the inhumane torture of US detainees, etc., etc.).

These are at once managerial and ideological issues in my view, as they relate to the individuals Bush appointed to manage these agencies, but also the direction he gave them; in the business sector, we would not question the fact that a CEO is generally where the buck stops in terms of responsibility for the health or weakness of his/her company, so we shouldn't think any less for those responsible for governmental agencies. Thus, for all of these types of high-level decisions, I would insist on someone who is less impulsive (to use former Senator Gary Hart's word for McCain in the PBS clip), who weighs their decisions with the care and research that's required for issues of such importance. Our country and world can't afford much more of our recklessness.

Woe is McCain: Country Second (on Sex Ed, etc.)

With the maddening TV ad below, McCain is clearly choosing country second, to the dismay of his clever communications folks who came up with the "country first" logo to the left (slightly modified by yours truly). But in complete honesty, I can't laugh when I watch McCain's ad below, because it comes at the sacrifice of a critical, sober discussion on how we educate kids about relationships, sex, etc. After I first saw the ad, I literally could not come up with words to describe my surprise at the utter gall it must have taken for McCain to "approve the message"--though he probably just opts out of watching the ads before they're released to avoid having his stomach turn, as mine did. I hesitate to even put the ad up here, but people need to see what's out there and do the work of considering the factual--or a-factual--nature of it all:



"Learning about sex before learning to read"?

"Wrong for your family"?

What a distortionist message. ABC, among others, looked at the issue to get some clarification (their article is from back in mid-2007 in connection with a discussion Obama had on sex education issues, though you can see a more recent debunking of it here also):

"When Obama's campaign was asked by ABC News to explain what kind of sex education Obama considers "age appropriate" for kindergarteners, the Obama campaign pointed to an Oct. 6, 2004 story from the Daily Herald in which Obama had "moved to clarify" in his Senate campaign that he "does not support teaching explicit sex education to children in kindergarten. . . The legislation in question was a state Senate measure last year that aimed to update Illinois' sex education standards with 'medically accurate' information . . . 'Nobody's suggesting that kindergartners are going to be getting information about sex in the way that we think about it,' Obama said. 'If they ask a teacher 'where do babies come from,' that providing information that the fact is that it's not a stork is probably not an unhealthy thing. Although again, that's going to be determined on a case by case basis by local communities and local school boards.'

In addition to local schools informing kindergarteners that babies do not come from the stork, the state legislation Obama supported in Illinois, which contained an "opt out" provision for parents, also envisioned teaching kindergarteners about "inappropriate touching," according to Obama's presidential campaign."(emphasis added)

Now, with the above in mind, take a look at a video of Obama talking about sex education issues and tell me if you think McCain was anywhere near fair in his ad. What are you left thinking about Obama and the way in which he would approach the understandably delicate issue of teaching kids about sex? How about the idea of him using the bully pulpit, as he says in the video, to bring the best of both sides of whatever argument before the public? I think McCain was not only unfair, but lacking in the most basic aspects of integrity; par for the course with politics? If Obama sinks to this level I'm not sure what I'll do, but I don't feel he has or will, judging by the character and values that I believe he has shown throughout the campaign and his past.

But no, the man behind that ad above is not the man I want for president; I wouldn't even want to talk to him if I had the chance after watching that, though I'm sure he's got plenty of win-at-any-cost folks encouraging him within his campaign--but he is culpable, and it shows what costs he's willing to pay for personal gain. As Paul Krugman so lucidly puts it in this New York Times article on the subject (titled "Blizzard of Lies"):

"How a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern...Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come."

McCain may have stood on some higher grounds at points in the past, but we are being asked to judge him from where he stands now, and I can't swallow this. Sex education is too taboo and made into too much of a political game already, and has suffered because of it.

If you haven't heard about some of the ways sex education has suffered, just take a look at President Bush's policy on combating AIDS in Africa (known as "PEPFAR"). The program is authorized to provide around $15 billion over five years--a good thing, no doubt, except that 33% has to go to teaching abstinence-only to most of the African populations being "educated" on AIDS prevention; condomn use is only taught to sex-workers and those living with AIDS. A similar approach is taken in the US, with the Bush Administration providing sex ed. funds almost exclusively to abstinence-only education; however, after "11 years of federally funded abstinence programs, at a cost of more than $1.3 billion," 2006 saw the first increase in teen pregnancy rates in 15 years.

Well, what should we do about sex education? Should we teach abstinence only? I'm with Obama on this, as he said in the same speech mentioned above:

"I honor and respect young people who choose to delay sexual activity...I’ve got two daughters, and I want them to understand that sex is not something casual. That's something that we definitely want to communicate and should be part of any curriculum. But we also know that when the statistics tell us that nearly half of 15 to 19 year olds are engaging in sexual activity, that for us to leave them in ignorance is potentially consigning them to illness, pregnancy, poverty, and in some cases, death."

I agree with him that sex isn't something that should be approached casually--that's just not the way a relationship-torn culture is going to end up with better relationships in my view; it's also not the way we will keep more teenagers from becoming pregnant. I don't think that teaching condom use is the only way to deal with the problem, but it's one way that should be taught alongside others. When it isn't, we are telling teenagers that they do not have a choice that is actually available to them; in doing so, we're dodging reality, in my view. Reality says many teenagers will have sex and, if they do not use condoms or birth control, they will become pregnant. So, we're consigning them to pregnancy by telling them the only way they can avoid it is by abstinence. Some might say pregnancy is the lesson or some form of "punishment" that these kids need, but I have huge problems with that--namely the life a baby might be brought into and the obvious inequality of the "punishment" that is meted out to the female and not the male (in general). I think the weakness of relationships that casual sex often brings about is a hard, but fair enough lesson in and of itself.

That said, I also think we're doing kids a disservice if we don't, above all else, teach them about the complex nature of relationships and sex, as is advocated in the following quote (from this article): "You need to teach about relationships. If you look at what kids have to digest on a daily basis, you have adults teaching kids about the pleasures of sex but not about the responsibilities that go with it." (I'm assuming the person quoted there is saying that adults are "teaching" kids through pop culture about the pleasures of sex and not the complexities.) It is a complicated issue when you are attempting to find middle ground, but certainly the ground is out there if people are willing to work to find it--though I can't say that McCain appears to be headed anywhere in that direction with ads like the one above.

PS--I can't mention McCain's misleading advertisements without noting his lie of an ad about Obama and the supposed "lipstick" slight against Sarah Palin. There's a decent video that puts it in context here, but the reality is that nobody would have thought Obama was making any reference to Palin if McCain had not put this ad out (particularly becuase Obama was not talking about her at all when he used the common saying, "putting lipstick on a pig"--which McCain himself uses in the video above). David Letterman had Obama on the other night, where he discussed it (the video also gives a nice picture of Obama's sense of humor). And in just looking around for a minute I saw yet another of McCain's ads on supposed "disrespect" of Palin; check out the FactCheck.org rebuttal of it here. Just the type of president we need right?

Update: Take a look at some of the newspaper comments about McCain's attacks in this new Obama video:

Woe is McCain: Economically Out of Touch

For a while I've wanted to start a set of posts looking at McCain and his various stances on issues, his character traits, etc., and thought this issue would be a good starting point; look for any other coming posts with the title "Woe is McCain" if you're interested in reading more.

Apparently McCain, when recently asked how many houses he and his wife own, said, "I think — I'll have my staff get to you...It's condominiums where — I'll have them get to you." You can actually hear the recorded question and answer at the top of this brief overview of the issue. I'm not really sure what to say here, as this would be funny if it weren't so far removed from any reality I could imagine.

I waited to post this though because none of the news I was seeing was making it clear whether the McCains actually lived in most of the houses or rented some out. I still couldn't find a definitive answer in looking around, but he and his wife clearly live in at least four, though it looks like they own twice that many; at least two of those eight are used by their children. Here's a list of the properties (from here): "Those real estate holdings include a Sedona ranch with three dwellings, worth $1.1 million; a Phoenix condominium suite that had originally been two units, worth $4.7 million; an $847,800 three-bedroom high-rise condo in Arlington; an oceanfront condo in La Jolla, Calif.; a half-million-dollar loft in Phoenix purchased for their daughter Meghan; another Phoenix condo, worth $830,000; and two beachfront condos in Coronado, Calif, one of which is valued at $2.7 million...Cindy McCain told Vogue magazine the family needed the second condo because the first was getting too crowded as their family grew." (See pictures and read another fairly biting description of the high-dollar homes here).

That said though, perhaps it would be easy for McCain to lose track (honestly). However, it still relates to a larger problem, I believe. First, there is the simple fact that he and his wife live in at least four big-money homes across the country--in a world where many are in need, I do have to say that seems excessive, though it's of course his choice. Secondly, McCain actually said recently that it was those making $5 million or more that he considers "rich." He mentioned this at a "faith forum" last weekend. Obama was there too and was asked the same question--he considered those making $250,000 or more to be rich (which is a lot closer to what I'd estimate). Third, McCain recently said the "fundamentals of our economy are strong." If you're not sure about the state of the economy, watch this tough video from Bill Moyers on the individual stories of some average Americans who have been hit hard by the current economic situation. Lastly, none of this even gets into his tax policies, such as the tax cuts of the current Administration that McCain says he plans to make permanent (even though he previously could not "in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate")--I'll have to write more on that topic, but I'll just say that I know a well-off Republican who literally said that he didn't need the annual $80,000 he was getting back because of Bush's tax cuts. Maybe, just maybe, that money could stay in the government pot and pay down some of our $9 trillion deficit, allow full health insurance coverage of all children, provide increases in the National Institute of Health (NIH) budget for cancer research, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum.

Add up the above points on McCain and you get an individual bouncing around the country between four expensive homes, who thinks the rich are those making over $5 million, feels the economy is fundamentally strong, and is all for skimping Americans by maintaining what I believe are unethical tax cuts. So what? So that's not the person I want in the White House deciding what amount of taxes are fair for various income brackets, whether to spend money on programs that create new jobs, whether to make health insurance affordable for the 47 million who don't have it, and so on. I'll have to write more on some of the economic issues related to this if I have a chance, but suffice to say right now that, given McCain's economic position and related perspective, I don't think he can relate to most Americans enough to make this country work as it could for most Americans.

Update: To give credit where credit is due, I just read this New York Times article that mentions, among other things, some of the charitable giving in which the McCains have been involved. While I still hold to the above points, I really have problems with the common approach in politics of overstating the case and leaving out complimentary points about one's opposition. The article seems to present a balanced picture of the overall scope of the McCains' wealth; here's an excerpt:

"[T]he Hensley family wealth, from its rough-and-tumble origins to prominence in Arizona’s corporate world, is also the fortune that propelled John McCain into national politics. A clearer picture of that fortune emerges from a review of public records and interviews with employees, business associates, friends and relatives.

Hensley & Company has grown from a tiny operation in the 1950s to the dominant beer wholesaler in Arizona and the third-largest Budweiser distributor in the country, with more than $300 million in annual sales. It plays a leading role in corporate Phoenix — Andy McCain, the senator’s stepson from his first marriage and a top executive of the beer company, is now president of the city’s Chamber of Commerce — and is a forceful presence in state politics on the issues that matter to it.

But by all accounts, Mrs. McCain is far from a forceful presence at the company, where she is chairwoman.

She crisscrosses the country on the company jet, keeps an accountant on the company payroll to mind her personal finances, drives a company Lexus with “MS BUD” plates and says she oversees the company’s “strategic planning and corporate vision.” Yet she almost never shows up in the office, is deemed an absentee owner [which is a technical not derogatory term] by Anheuser-Busch and has left scarcely a mark on the company, present and former executives say.

Mrs. McCain has spent far more time as a volunteer on behalf of needy children. She is a board member of CARE and Operation Smile, which provides cleft-palate surgery for impoverished children; when she visited Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh 17 years ago, she brought a baby girl back for the surgery and then adopted her...While all of the family's real estate is held by Mrs. McCain, the John and Cindy McCain Family Foundation is funded by Mr. McCain. From 2001 to 2006, its donations averaged about $260,000 a year. In addition to big donations to children's causes, mine clearing and Parkinson's research, the United States Naval Academy received $420,000 to run an ethics conference in the senator's name; the Brophy school has received more than $250,000; Christ Lutheran, which Bridget and Jim attended, more than $100,000."

Update 2: In September, McCain continued to say that the "fundamentals of our economy our strong," despite the enormous collapses of banks, mortgage lenders and others. Rachel Maddow of MSNBC provided a good overview on all of it, bringing in the perspective of the Obama camp as well:

Woe is McCain Series

Part 1 - Woe is McCain: Economically Out of Touch

Part 2 - Woe is McCain: Country Second (on Sex Ed, etc.)

Part 3 - Woe is McCain: Impulsive Decision Maker

Part 4 - Woe is McCain: Bad Temper, Bad Foreign Policy