[mukto-mona] McCain - The World's Worst Panderer

Dear Mukto-Mona readers:

 

Every once in a while an Op-ED is published that merits recirculation.  The presidential election is months away but we should learn the positives and negatives of each leading candidate.  The Republican Part's flag-bearer in November 4, 2008 election is going to be Senator John McCain who claims to be a conservative.  But the conservative radio talk show hosts think he has a streak of liberalism in him.  Senator McCain is not an ideologue.  He had often flip-flopped on issues, which made the conservatives in America upset.  Now that McCain needs the support of neo-cons and Christian fundamentalists to win the election in November, he is changing side.

 

Please read this NYT Op-Ed article to know more about John McCain.  I have problem with McCain's voting record and his temper.  On many occasions he lost his cool on senate floor.  The last thing we need is a president who has temper problem.  The person who could push the nuclear button at his will should be calm and cool, which is not McCain's deportment.

 

What America needs now is a visionary leader.  In my book McCain is not a candidate who could inspire and unite ordinary people to do extraordinary thing. 

 

Sincerely,

 

A.H. Jaffor Ullah
New Orleans

 

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Op-Ed Column

 

The World's Worst Panderer

 

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: February 17, 2008 in NY Times Op-Ed Page

 

Even for those of us who shudder at many of John McCain's positions, there is something refreshing about a man who wins so many votes despite a major political shortcoming: he is abysmal at pandering.

 

What sets Senator McCain apart isn't so much his physical courage in Vietnam; many of his fellow prisoners also showed immense bravery under torture. But the United States Congress tends to be a courage-free zone, so Mr. McCain's orneriness toward Republican primary voters makes him a lionheart in the political world.

 

It's a pleasure to see candidates who don't just throw red meat to the crowds but try to offer vegetarian options.

 

Consider torture. There was nary a vote in the Republican primary to be gained by opposing the waterboarding of swarthy Muslim men accused of terrorism. But Mr. McCain led the battle against Dick Cheney on torture, even though it cost him donations, votes and endorsements.

 

Even more than his time as a prisoner in Hanoi, that marked Mr. McCain's most heroic moment. He risked his political career to protect Muslim terror suspects who constitute the most despised and voiceless people in America.

 

Then there's immigration. While other Republican candidates revved up the mobs by debating how high a limb is optimal for hanging illegal immigrants, he patiently explained that it's a complex problem with unsatisfying solutions, including creation of a path to citizenship for illegals.

 

For years, Mr. McCain denounced ethanol subsidies, which exist mostly because every ambitious politician in America wants to win the Iowa caucuses someday. This year he claimed that he liked ethanol after all, but he was so manifestly insincere and incompetent in this pandering that the episode was less contemptible than amusing.

 

In Michigan, he dared to tell voters that some jobs "aren't coming back."

 

In Iraq, Mr. McCain argued that the solution to an unpopular war was to send more troops. He gets bonus points for almost never mentioning that his son Jimmy was a marine stationed in Iraq until this month.

 

Granted, his pride in "straight talk" may arise partly because he is an execrable actor. When he does try double-talk, he looks so guilty and uncomfortable that he convinces nobody.

 

It's also striking that Barack Obama is leading a Democratic field in which he has been the candidate who is least-scripted and most willing to annoy primary voters, whether in speaking about Reagan's impact on history or on the suffering of Palestinians.

 

All of this is puzzlingly mature on the part of the electorate. A common complaint about President Bush is that he walls himself off from alternative points of view, but the American public has the same management flaw: it normally fires politicians who tell them bad news.

 

It is true that Mr. McCain sometimes weaves and bobs. With the arrival of the primaries, he has moved to the right on social issues and pretended to be more conservative than he is. On Wednesday, for example, he retreated on his brave stand on torture by voting against a bill that would block the C.I.A. from using physical force in interrogations.

 

His most famous pander came in 2000, when, after earlier denouncing the Confederate flag as a "symbol of racism," he embraced it as "a symbol of heritage." To his credit, Mr. McCain later acknowledged, "I feared that if I answered honestly I could not win the South Carolina primary, so I chose to compromise my principles."

 

In short, Mr. McCain truly has principles that he bends or breaks out of desperation and with distaste. That's preferable to politicians who are congenital invertebrates.

 

I disagree with Mr. McCain on Iraq, taxes, abortion and almost every other major issue. He has a nasty temper, which isn't ideal for the hand holding a nuclear trigger. For a man running partly on biography, he treated his first wife, Carol, poorly. And one of the meanest put-downs in modern political history was a savage joke that Mr. McCain publicly related about Chelsea Clinton when she was 18 years old; it was inexcusable.

 

Yet Mr. McCain himself would probably acknowledge every one of these flaws, and he is a rare politician with the courage not just to follow the crowd but also to lead it. It is refreshing to see that courage rewarded by voters.

 

 

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