The “Maverick” John McCain.
I wrote this in 2006, for 100 Ways America is Screwing Up the World. McCain's faux maverick status has been further upended by his flip flop on immigration reform, torture, and taxes. His choice of Sarah Palin, supposedly another maverick, is equally phony: there is nothing "maverick" about a woman who has supported every bit of the nutty right-wing agenda (creationism, "global warming is a hoax," anti-choice, etc., etc.). In fact, that is why she was selected for VP, proof of the grip the extremist right-wingers on McCain and the Republican party. On foreign policy, one has to ask, is there a war John McCain doesn't want to get us involved in? What is so different from, say, Dick Cheney, in that?
Six, seven houses; career built on a beer fortune; illegal activity as a member of the Keating Five; right-wing voting record; wrong on Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia, and Iran; tax cuts for the wealthy, crumbs for the rest of us. That sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Maverick, shmaverick.
He has that Teflon look. John McCain is the kind of conservative that moderates and even some liberals are reported to love—plain speaking, incorruptible, sensible.
But McCain is a belligerent right-winger who is dangerous on foreign policy and heartless on domestic issues. He may be “good” on campaign finance reform and torture, and he has “character” in standing up to the character assassins taking shots at John Kerry and John Murtha, but these are cost free. On the important stuff, he’s with the loony right, 100 percent.
Consider North Korea. He said that Bush had “bungled its North Korea policy through a confused and overly conciliatory approach.” Referring to Bush as overly conciliatory is like calling the Pope a vamp.
He managed in the first minute of his speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention to conflate all the phony reasons for the war in Iraq—weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. “Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war,” he said. And then he invoked September 11th.
He resolutely defended Bush’s lack of honesty about going to war in Iraq, saying the critics are lying. And he voted to remove Bill Clinton from office in 1999 for lying about, what was it?
He was happy to let Haiti devolve into the nightmare of the tonton macoute and opposed Clinton’s attempt to restore Aristide, saying we had no responsibility for Haiti. Read a little history, John.
On “intelligent design,” the idiotic “creationism” scam, McCain said “let the students decide” whether it should be taught. Let’s also ask them if they’d rather read Shakespeare or Spiderman. He also has predictable right-wing positions on gay marriage, tax cuts, and military spending
The “maverick” is a menace, essentially a follower of right-wing convention. That’s the path to the White House, and that’s the path John McCain is treading.