McCain’s Suspension Bridge to Nowhere
WHAT we learned last week is that the man who always puts his “country first” will take the country down with him if that’s what it takes to get to the White House.
For all the focus on Friday night’s deadlocked debate, it still can’t obscure what preceded it: When John McCain gratuitously parachuted into Washington on Thursday, he didn’t care if his grandstanding might precipitate an even deeper economic collapse. All he cared about was whether he might save his campaign. George Bush put more deliberation into invading Iraq than McCain did into his own reckless invasion of the delicate Congressional negotiations on the bailout plan.
By the time he arrived, there already was a bipartisan agreement in principle. It collapsed hours later at the meeting convened by the president in the Cabinet Room. Rather than help try to resuscitate Wall Street’s bloodied bulls, McCain was determined to be the bull in Washington’s legislative china shop, running around town and playing both sides of his divided party against Congress’s middle. Once others eventually forged a path out of the wreckage, he’d inflate, if not outright fictionalize, his own role in cleaning up the mess his mischief helped make. Or so he hoped, until his ignominious retreat.
The question is why would a man who forever advertises his own honor toy so selfishly with our national interest at a time of crisis. I’ll leave any physiological explanations to gerontologists — if they can get hold of his complete medical records — and any armchair psychoanalysis to the sundry McCain press acolytes who have sorrowfully tried to rationalize his erratic behavior this year. The other answers, all putting politics first, can be found by examining the 24 hours before he decided to “suspend” campaigning and swoop down on the Capitol to save America from the Sunnis or the Shia, or whoever perpetrated all those credit-default swaps.
To put these 24 hours in context, you must remember that McCain not only knows little about the economy but that he has not previously expressed any urgency about its meltdown. It was on Sept. 15 — the day after his former idol Alan Greenspan pronounced the current crisis a “once-in-a-century” catastrophe — that McCain reaffirmed for the umpteenth time that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong.” As recently as Tuesday he had not yet even read the two-and-a-half-page bailout proposal first circulated by Hank Paulson last weekend. “I have not had a chance to see it in writing,” he explained. (Maybe he was waiting for it to arrive by Western Union instead of PDF.)
Then came Black Wednesday — not for the stock market, which was holding steady in anticipation of Washington action, but for McCain. As the widely accepted narrative has it, his come-to-Jesus moment arrived that morning, when he awoke to discover that Barack Obama had surged ahead by nine percentage points in the Washington Post/ABC News poll . The McCain campaign hastily suited up its own pollster to belittle that finding — only to be drowned out by a fusillade of new polls from Fox News , Marist and CNN/Time , each with numbers closer to Post/ABC than not. Obama was rising most everywhere except the moose strongholds of Alaska and Montana.
That was not the only bad news raining down on McCain. His camp knew what Katie Couric had in the can from her interview with Sarah Palin . The first excerpt was to be broadcast by CBS that night, and it had to be upstaged fast.
But even that wasn’t the top political threat McCain faced last week. Bigger still was the mounting evidence of the seamless synergy between his campaign and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage monsters at the heart of the housing bust that set off our current calamity. Most of all, it was the fast-moving events on that front that precipitated his panic to roll out his diversionary, over-the-top theatrics on Wednesday.
What we were learning — through The New York Times , Newsweek and Roll Call — was ugly. Davis Manafort, the lobbying firm owned by McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, had received $15,000 a month from Freddie Mac from late 2005 until last month. This was in addition to the $30,000 a month that Davis was paid from 2000 to 2005 by the so-called Homeownership Alliance, an advocacy organization that he headed and that was financed by Freddie and Fannie to fight regulation.
The McCain campaign tried to pre-emptively deflect such revelations by reviving the old Rove trick of accusing your opponent of your own biggest failings. It ran attack ads about Obama’s own links to the mortgage giants. But neither of the former Freddie-Fannie executives vilified in those ads, Franklin Raines and James Johnson , had worked at those companies lately or are currently associated with the Obama campaign. (Raines never worked for the campaign at all .) By contrast, Davis is the tip of the Freddie-Fannie-McCain iceberg. McCain’s senior adviser , his campaign’s vice chairman, his Congressional liaison and the reported head of his White House transition team all either made fortunes from recent Freddie-Fannie lobbying or were players in firms that did.
By Wednesday, the McCain campaign’s latest tactic for countering this news — attacking the press, especially The Times — was paying diminishing returns. Davis abruptly canceled his scheduled appearance that day at a weekly reporters’ lunch sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor, escaping any further questions by pleading that he had to hit the campaign trail. (He turned up at the “21” Club in New York that night, wining and dining McCain fund-raisers.)
It’s then that Angry Old Ironsides McCain suddenly emerged to bark that our financial distress was “the greatest crisis we’ve faced, clearly, since World War II” — even greater than the Russia-Georgia conflict, which in August he had called the “first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the cold war.” Campaigns, debates and no doubt Bristol Palin’s nuptials had to be suspended immediately so he could ride to the rescue, with Joe Lieberman as his Robin.
Yet even as he huffed and puffed about being a “leader,” McCain took no action and felt no urgency. As his Congressional colleagues worked tirelessly in Washington, he malingered in New York. He checked out the suffering on Main Street (or perhaps High Street) by conferring with Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the Hillary-turned-McCain supporter best known for her fabulous London digs and her diatribes against Obama’s elitism. McCain also found time to have a well-publicized chat with one of those celebrities he so disdains , Bono, and to give a self-promoting public speech at the Clinton Global Initiative.
There was no suspension of his campaign. His surrogates and ads remained on television. Huffington Post bloggers, working the phones, couldn’t find a single McCain campaign office that had gone on hiatus. This “suspension” ruse was an exact replay of McCain’s self-righteous “suspension” of the G.O.P. convention as Hurricane Gustav arrived on Labor Day. “We will put aside our political hats and put on our American hats,” he declared then , solemnly pledging that conventioneers would help those in need. But as anyone in the Twin Cities could see, the assembled put on their party hats instead, piling into the lobbyists’ bacchanals earlier than scheduled, albeit on the down-low.
Much of the press paid lip service to McCain’s new “suspension” as it had to its prototype. In truth, the only campaign activity McCain did drop was a Wednesday evening taping with David Letterman. Don’t mess with Dave. Picking up where the “The View” left off in speaking truth to power, the uncharacteristically furious host hammered the absent McCain on and off for 40 minutes, repeatedly observing that the cancellation “didn’t smell right.”
In a journalistic coup de grâce worthy of “60 Minutes,” Letterman went on to unmask his no-show guest as a liar. McCain had phoned himself that afternoon to say he was “getting on a plane immediately” to deal with the grave situation in Washington, Letterman told the audience. Then he showed video of McCain being touched up by a makeup artist while awaiting an interview by Couric that same evening at another CBS studio in New York.
It’s not hard to guess why McCain had blown off Letterman for Couric at the last minute. The McCain campaign’s high anxiety about the disastrous Couric-Palin sit-down was skyrocketing as advance excerpts flooded the Internet. By offering his own interview to Couric for the same night, McCain hoped (in vain) to dilute Palin’s primacy on the “CBS Evening News.”
Letterman’s most mordant laughs on Wednesday came when he riffed about McCain’s campaign “suspension”: “Do you suspend your campaign? No, because that makes me think maybe there will be other things down the road, like if he’s in the White House, he might just suspend being president. I mean, we’ve got a guy like that now!”
That’s no joke. Bush has so little credibility he can govern only through surrogates (Paulson is the new Petraeus). When he spoke about the economic crisis in prime time earlier that same night, he registered as no more than an irritating speed bump en route to “David Blaine: Dive of Death.”
It’s that utter power vacuum that gave McCain the opening to pull his potentially catastrophic display of economic “leadership” last week. He may be the first presidential candidate in our history to risk wrecking the country even before being voted into the Oval Office.
Choosing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running mate speaks volumes about the real John McCain — a man who places his political ambitions in front of what’s good for the country.
Given McCain’s health and age and Palin’s lack of a resume should be enough of a signal that McCain is not thinking about what’s best for the country in this election. McCain simply wants to go to the Oval Office before he’s thrown in the grave. And he foolishly thinks an inexperienced, unqualified backwoods political player like Palin will be his meal ticket simply because she has t and a.
Don’t get me wrong … Palin is known as a reformer and rightly so. She makes a fine Governor of Alaska. And given time, no doubt Palin will rise to national prominence. But, bringing her to Washington now is like taking the bread out of the oven before it’s done baking.
McCain is making a mockery of the American public with Palin as his running mate. This move is reckless and incompetent and is not befitting a would be leader of the free world. Palin is simply not qualified — yet — to be our president (which is exactly what a vice presidential must be).
John McCain is not the simple POW maverick who’s story we’ve been forced fed over the last 20 plus years. He is proving himself to be a dangerous politico bent on becoming leader of the free world
But what the Republicans need to do is nominate someone else. McCain is not fit to serve. And his nomination is dangerous … dangerous for the country.
Palin is an exciting candidate to many marginalized voters …. and the Republican party should bring her back in eight years.
But for the next four, McCain can not, can NOT become the President of the United States.
What could Hillary Clinton be thinking? Aligning herself with John McCain around some pie-in-the-sky
ponzi scheme their calling a “gas tax break”? Honestly.
We are at such a critical juncture, the moment so pivotal, with concern to our economy, our environment and our way-of-life: this is not the time to be coaxing Americans to the gas station.
This is a time for visionary leadership. This is a time for revolutionary ideas and innovation! We have to come up with alternative sources of energy and transportation. We cannot remain dependent and addicted to oil and gas.
Clinton is proving that she is nothing more than another oil industry lap dog with this backwards move.
Columnist Anatoly, you get it all wrong.
Race is an issue, but it is not the issue. And if anything, the fact that McCain is an old-rich-white-guy is going to hurt his chances at getting elected more than Obama’s blackness.
Obama has stepped up onto a platform that was born into the public’s conscience when Will Smith started headlining movies. A platform that was conceived during Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches. We have a long history of African-American men and women leading us and teaching us and showing us how to manifest the true American spirit. A history that spans our entire 231 years.
America is ready for a black president.
On “Larry King” last night, Jenna Bush said that she is open to all of the candidates. This is a good omen for the Democrats.
Hillary was expected to win Pennsylvania and she did. No surprise there. But, is this prolonged battle between Clinton and Obama going to benefit the Democrats’ chance of getting back into the White House?
I stand by my previous assertion: No.
It’s my opinion that the Democratic primary has further divided a deeply divided society. Hope has been smashed on the backs of hard-working Americans across the socio-political spectrum. I think people feel lied-to, betrayed and mislead by all of the candidates. And I feel that cynicism about our government has not been defeated. In fact, cynicism reigns supreme.
So, why do I feel that McCain will be stepping into the Oval Office come November?
Because the Democrats are simply circus clowns and Republicans the ring masters (and the concessions cart and ticket takers).
And also, people have a long and nuanced memory of McCain’s career. He’s been up, he’s been down, he’s been all around in the public’s conscience. They may dislike him. They may not agree with him or trust him or think he is the best man for the job. But, no one can argue that McCain hasn’t been serving our country his whole life in good ways and bad.
Things could change. And I hope they do. The Republicans need the boot!!! McCain is NOT the best man for the job. But, Hillary and Obama have got to stop thinking about themselves and start thinking about the common good. And Pennsylvania’s results have just added more fuel to the fire. Sigh.
Well, nothing shocking here: If you put money in McCain’s pocket he will help you push through questionable real estate transactions. Just a little old-fashioned politics from an old-fashioned guy.
But, hey: you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. That’s okay, right?
WRONG! Not in public office it’s not!
When are Americans going to start demanding a little more fair and balanced approach to governance?
Presidential “hope”full Senator John McCain still can’t tell his Shia’s from his Sunnis, or Maliki from Sadr, or a ceasefire from all out defeat. He keeps on getting it wrong. All wrong. You just can’t make this stuff up!
But, hey: cut him a break! McCain’s just calling it as he sees it … through McCain-colored glasses that is. Keep on livin’ that dream, McCain!!!
I’m sure McCain will find all sorts of stuff to forget about if he makes it to the White House. (Anybody seen my “Straight Talk Express” lying about?)
I’m calling bullshit on all this press about McCain visiting “poor areas“. As if “poor areas” were dead zones on a map where you can’t get a cell phone signal. As if “poor areas” were uncharted regions of Mars thought to be inhabited by savage life forms. As if McCain were fucking diving in to a black hole tethered to one of his wife’s diamond-studded panties. As if we should give McCain a medal of honor for doing his so-called job.
How brave. How noble. How exemplary for this privileged white man to dirty his shoes in “poor areas”.
McCain might as well come out and say: “Let them eat cake.” Or he could just fly over them in one of his private jets. He is so fucking out of touch.
The poor are not aliens. The poor are not foreign. The poor are our friends and neighbors, our brothers and sisters.
And the poor don’t live in one “poor area”. The poor live right next door, down the street, above and below us. Has McCain never taken a stroll around the block in DC (one of the most impoverished cities in America!)??? What a load of horse shit, McCain.
Call me a cynic. Call me jaded. But, I don’t buy for a second that McCain gives a damn about “poor people”. I don’t think that McCain cares or empathizes with those less fortunate. This is nothing but a media blitz in hopes of inaccurately painting McCain a “compassionate” Republican.
Again: bullshit. It’s all politics, baby. If he really cared about the poor he would have taken the silver spoon out of his mouth and done something to ease their burden during his 26 years in public office.