When I Stopped Admiring John McCain

There was a time when I really admired John McCain. I distinctly remember him standing up to the “swiftboaters,” telling President Bush that they were way out of line, and that Bush should direct his supporters to stop these attacks. Of course Mr. Bush did not do so, in my opinion, to his undying shame.

During the early months of the campaign, I continued to think that McCain was basically an honorable guy. So when did things change for me? It was when Senator Obama made his tour of the Middle-East and Europe.

You will recall that Obama considered making a visit to a military hospital in Germany, but canceled his visit when then the military brass voiced their concern that the visit could wind up being perceived as political, which was against policy. Nobody wants injured veterans to be “used” for political purposes. The McCain camp criticized him roundly for canceling the visit, calling Obama unpatriotic and stating that McCain would never miss an opportunity to visit the troops. And there was a very powerful commercial put out almost immediately that really tore into Obama.

Then came the leak…to me the first and most devastating insight into the Republican strategy for the campaign. It turned out that there were actually two commercials written and produced. One was critical of Obama for NOT visiting the troops. There was a second one however, which had been intended to be critical of Obama if he had actually visited the troops, accusing him of using them for political purposes.

So here’s the point. the Republicans were going to criticize Obama no matter what he did. I realized that they were not just critical of specific positions; they were happy to criticize him for anything! The point was to destroy Obama’s reputation, his character. The plan was simply to criticize and create anger and outrage. It seems to be a failed strategy.

May it rest in peace.

A Word from the Author

In a way, I really admire Republicans. It NEVER ceases to amaze me how they manage year after year to get SO MANY Americans to vote against their own self-interests again and again. They are brilliant, though cynical. I am afraid they are on the verge of doing irreparable harm. In the name of patriotism, they want to dismantle our government. They have taken Ronald Reagan's words as gospel, believing that government is the casue of all of our problems and that can remedy none of them. They have politicized nearly every aspect of government, orchestrated assaults on the separation of church and state, science, attorneys, the courts, higher education and even the Constitution itself. We have allowed ourselves to fall victim to the propaganda that led to war in Iraq without a critical analysis of arguments in support of the decision. Global warming appears real and is worsening while we fail to act. Our economy is in shambles. The housing crisis deepens. Our currency has lost substantially in value, and our manufacturing base is a remnant of what is was only a decade ago, with our jobs leaving for foreign lands, while big business sits on billions of dollars and giant corporations in banking, oil and energy remain largely under-regulated. We seem to have surrendered our future to a political discourse that descends to the lowest common denominator, usually influenced by fear, personal attack and destruction, rather than dispassionate consideration of the merits. If we are going to thrive once again, something has got to change. Here is my small contribution to that end. I will try to respond to what I read in the news, but I am NOT a scholar. I leave it to others to fact check, follow up and support my points, but I refuse to continue to sit quietly while our demacracy is subverted and turned to the support of wealthy, powerful and cynical interests.