After a short haitus, it's on to section three. Let's see who's with me still.
Part 3 - John McCain
John McCain's a war hero. We all know that. Pretty much everyone who's not a Moveon.org pseudo-commie, half-insane liberal seems to agree that he's a man of strength and courage who loves his country dearly. He also has a vast amount of experience and more than enough commander in chief credentials. None of that will be enough by itself to win him the nomination, however. Let's take a look at how he stacks up otherwise.
Since its release in 2005, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's Lincoln biography Team of Rivals has gotten a fair amount of press. The main theme of the book is that Lincoln's true political genius came from the way he set up his cabinet. Rather than appointing only men who agreed with him on everything or repaying favors to his cronies, Lincoln selected four of his most bitter rivals as attorney general, secretary of state, secretary of treasury, and secretary of war respectively. Lincoln, according to Goodwin, looked beyond friendships and affiliations and, during a difficult era for our nation, wanted to be advised by the absolute smartest men he could find. I've seen Ms. Goodwin interviewed by both Tim Russert and John Stewart and they both discussed the idea that modern politicians should follow the Lincoln model. One of the problems with the Bush white house, as many people see it, is that he seems to insulate himself from the world and only listen to people who are telling him what he wants to hear. Of the three remaining candidates, I feel like John McCain would be the least likely to do that. Like Bush, he can be stubborn and tenacious on matters of principle, but unlike Bush, he has close friends and allies from both sides of the aisle and he's not afraid to change his position when he comes across new evidence. Many republicans frown at the fact that John McCain has sponsored bills with the Ted Kennedys and Dianne Feinstein's of the world, but I think it's great. If he's elected president, I'm confident that McCain will pick the most knowledgeable people he can find to be his sounding board, whether that means Mitt Romney or Joe Leiberman, Chuck Hagel or Lindsey Graham. But that's a bad thing to some people. According to many conservatives, John McCain is a dirty liberal. On both social and fiscal issues, however, he's solidly conservative. He has a 100% pro life voting record (for a somewhat nuanced explanation of why I think that's a good thing, read this post) and has never voted for a tax increase. So why do hardcore conservatives seem to hate him so much? Well, that's slightly complicated. For one thing, he's never sucked up to the talking heads. The Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters of the world like to think they have their listeners wrapped around their fingers and if their enormous egos aren't placated, then they're quick to turn against the man or woman who slighted them. John McCain has always refused to kowtow to them or apologize for disagreeing. When conservative radio host Bill Cunningham was brought in my Cincinnati republicans to "warm up the crowd" before a McCain rally, he repeatedly used Obama's middle name, Hussein, in an obvious attempt to link him to Islam. As soon as he found out what had been said, McCain immediately repudiated Cunningham's statements and made it clear that that's not the kind of campaign he's running. Cunningham responded angrily to McCain's chastisement and said that he was going to join Ann Coulter in voting for Hillary. Tiffs like that have been occurring throughout McCain's career, so next time you hear some talk radio guy railing against him, remember that he's probably doing so with a built in bias based on some perceived slight against his fraternity.
That's not to say though that the conservatives don't have fair complaints about McCain's policies. There's two main issues on which the far right and John McCain strongly disagree. First, there's immigration. I haven't done intensive research on McCain's immigration views, but here's the gist as I understand it: McCain gave support to a plan that would allow illegal immigrants to earn citizenship. In order to do so, they would be required to turn themselves into authorities, return home for a period of time (I believe about two years) and pay a somewhat hefty fine (it was about $2,000 if I remember correctly) before they would be fast-tracked to citizenship. Critics have said that the plan amounts to amnesty. While one of Webster's definitions of amnesty says, "the release from the penalties of an offense" (remember when you were in junior high and started every paper with "According to Webster's Dictionary, [the thing I'm writing about] is..."?) and the plan would indeed forgive certain individuals of the current penalties for illegal immigration, another definition contained there is, "the excusing of an offense without exacting a penalty." If that's the definition we're going with, then McCain's plan is definitely not amnesty. A couple thousand dollar fine and a bus ticket back from may not be the punishment many conservatives would prefer, but it's most certainly a punishment. I don't want to put words into his mouth, but I think that McCain's plan is mainly a function of his realistic viewpoint. Sure, we could hypothetically round up all 15 to 20 million illegal aliens and send them back home. Anybody on the far right have a solution of how to do that logistically? As far as I can see, it would be pretty much impossible. That's not to mention all the families that would be screwed up. Any child born here is an American citizen and I'm sure a lot of parents would choose to leave their kids behind to a better life. I can already see the TV footage of little kids crying as they're ripped from their parents' arms. Think Elian Gonzalez times a million. I'm all for upholding the law and tightening our borders and I think McCain is too, but sometimes you have to admit that your reach has exceeded your grasp and do anything you can to stem the bleeding.
The other major issue of contention between hardcore conservatives and McCain is the Bush tax cuts. When the tax cuts first went to congress, McCain went against the majority of republicans and voted against them. As you can imagine, that pissed a lot of people off. His reasoning was pretty solid, however. If you know anything about McCain's legislative history, you know that wasteful government spending has always been one of his favorite issues. Since he first arrived in the Senate, he's done everything he could to stamp out pork barrel spending, which is the euphemism given to the common practice of legislators inserting clauses into a bill that give their home states money for things that had nothing to do with the main thrust of the bill. It's the reason that a lot of people support a line-item veto and it's something that, according to McCain, was abundant in the tax cut bill. While he's generally for lower taxes, he couldn't in good conscience vote for a bill that was a textbook example of the very thing he's railed against for years. Since then, McCain has said that he thinks the Bush tax cuts were good for the economy and he supports making them permanent. Really, he's on the same page with conservatives on this one. Some of them just don't want to admit it.
Marisa commented that she feels like she has to pick the lesser evil this year. That's how I felt in 2004. I'd voted for Bush the first time and he'd proceeded to champion the godawful bad No Child Left Behind act, fail to make a convincing case for war and spread half-truths in the process and then completely mismanage said war to the point that people were already starting to compare it to Vietnam. I flat out refused to vote for him again. That left me with flip-flopping, soulless, liberal Kerry and I knew I couldn't vote for him either. I almost didn't vote at all, but then I decided that I'd use my vote to make a statement (albeit an unnoticed, mostly insignificant one). I voted for the Libertarian candidate because, while I don't necessarily agree with the Libertarian viewpoint on everything, I think it would be great if we had a few more parties to choose from. I got a lot of grief from my roommates for my decision, but I stand by it and I'd do it again faced with a similarly dismal choice. I don't, however, plan on voting Libertarian again this year. Anyone who's discussed politics with me will testify that I don't make any attempt to hide the fact that I'm a McCain fan. I dig the whole straight talker/maverick attitude and I agree with the majority of policy decisions he's made. We don't always see eye to eye and I don't blindly follow every word he says, but I happen to think he'd make an excellent president.
So there you have it. I'm going with door number three. Feel free to choose another option. Just don't say I didn't warn you.
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