McCain in the Ash Heap
Payback's a Bitch
By DAVID MICHAEL GREEN
With apologies to Churchill (who owed a few of his own): Never have so many
been so wrong about so much.
There are few things youd less rather be right now than a
conservative/regressive, and that is why. Its like the old Firesign Theater
bit: Everything You Know Is Wrong. Dogs flew spaceships! The Aztecs
invented the vacation! Men and women are the same sex! Our forefathers took
drugs! Yes! That's right! Everything you know is wrong!
And, whats worse, everybody knows it except you. America is turning
decisively away from its tragic thirty-year experiment with Reaganism-Bushism,
and for very good reason. Regressives have ruled the country more or less
unabated (Democrats, the supposed carriers of the liberal torch, were during
these last three decades either frightened, centrist or irrelevent and
usually all three at once). Moreover, during the last years especially the
Cringe Decade the right was particularly forceful, particularly unfettered,
particularly successful at having its way, and particularly arrogant in the
self-righteous belief in its authority on all things.
Once small problem, though. If you sat down with a pen and paper and tried to
invent a more thorough litany of failure on the rights watch, youd be hard
pressed to top what theyve actually done. I suppose inadvertently nuking all
the major cities of the United States would be worse, but I cant think of much
else. The simple truth is that the regressive movement took a great and proud
and prosperous country and ran it into the ditch at 130 miles an hour. Worse
yet, for them and unlike the bad old years of Willie Horton, or invading
Panama, or Clintons faux scandals the public isnt fooled anymore.
They had already caught on to the game, in large part, a few years back, which
is why Bush has been moribund in the absolute cellar of job approval ratings
for almost the entirety of his second term. Things were already tough for the
black hats, but then this economic crisis came and walloped people severely,
right in the wallet. One thing about Americans theyre seriously selfish.
You take away their reputation and their liberties and their democracy and they
might might! vote against you. You take away their money, theyll rip your
fucking lungs out, Bro.
And if John McCain seems particularly short on breath of late, thats why.
Theres nothing quite like the total absence of breathing organs to put a crimp
in your respiratory function.
But this crackup is way, way bigger than the righteously deserved toilet
training of one John Sidney McCain the Third. This is the end of an era, and
not a moment too soon. It now looks like Democrats will win a 1932-style,
landslide, realigning election (as I predicted one year ago), smashing McCain
in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, picking up double-digit
seats in the House, and possibly even gaining a filibuster-proof majority of 60
in the Senate. Even Mitch McConnell, a smug horror story of a minority leader
for his decrepit party, looks like hell be losing his seat, along with such
smarmy dreaded incumbents such as Elizabeth Dole and Norm Coleman. This has
all the makings of a serious and even perhaps lethal spanking for the hated GOP.
That would leave wishy-washy sometime-conservative Supreme Court Justice
Anthony Kennedy as the sole remaining bulwark of regressivism in the American
government. Which is to say none at all. It used to be said that justices
read election results too, and never was that more true of anyone than of
Kennedy, well before this year, but especially now. Even as we speak (and as I
also predicted), were seeing many on the right scrambling now to reinvent
themselves as progressives (for some, like David Brooks or Coleman, who had
been lefties back when that was trendy, this represents a reconversion
conversion). Anthony Kennedy will surely be on that list. In the 1930s, this
same scenario developed, and a troglodyte majority on the Supreme Court started
striking down New Deal legislation in a time of massive duress, only to have an
angry public, Congress, and highly popular president turn on them. Kennedy
wont make that mistake. He
aint gonna sacrifice his personal legacy to keep Clarence Thomas pure, that
much we can guarantee. Can you imagine, for example, a Democratic Congress
vigorously moving national health care, or jobs, legislation, and a Democratic
president ceremoniously signing it into law, only for Kennedy to provide the
swing vote on the Court striking it down as unconstitutional? Fat chance. The
guys not suicidal, and he doesnt want 300 million angry Americans trying to
Google his address.
The trajectory of the regressive movement over the last thirty years has led us
to this horrid place. At least you could say that their little mini-revolution
began with some ideas, however disastrous those were, and however much they
always masked the true kleptocratic purpose of the movement. Reagan had his
Cold Warrior shtick, along with some notions of political economy he was
peddling. Greedy and stupid Americans, their post-war prosperity already
perceptibly beginning to slip away in the late 1970s, foolishly bought the
whole package anything to keep the wallet stuffed and the bloated car out of
the hands of the repo man. Reagan surely did not win the Cold War, but he
surely did exacerbate the steady unraveling of the middle class. The national
debt was tripled, while the burden of taxes was shifted from the rich to the
non-rich, and organized labor was undermined at every turn. Surprise, surprise
the rich got a lot richer, the
poor got poorer, and the middle class stood still.
By the time we got to 2004, the bogus ideas were no longer even bothered with,
as the regressive electoral appeal was reduced down to pure lies and a patent
appeal to fear. The marketing genius Karl Rove managed to fool all of the
people some of the time, and turned war hero John Kerry into someone to be
feared and doubted, while war avoider George Bush became GI Joe. Thats a hell
of a lot of political detergent to move off of supermarket shelves, but along
with some old-fashioned electoral fraud in Ohio, of course it worked one last
time. Bush bragged about winning political capital to spend in his second
term, but youd have to be as stupid and disingenuous as the little toad
himself (the same guy who declared the Iraq war over before it actually began,
and who said Youre doing a heckuva job, Brownie) to have believed that
nonsense. The truth was that 2004 was the last gasp of the old black magic,
and it just barely
worked. Use lies, racism, homophobia, xenophobia and national security
bogeymen to scare pathetically ill-informed Americans, and in non-recessionary
times you could win another election. Back then, at least.
That game is over now, exhausted for a generation or more, though a shamefully
and embarrassingly desperate John McCain is still trying to play it. And why
wouldnt he? If he doesnt care about his honor and integrity and reputation
and he evidently doesnt, at least compared to how much he cares about winning
the presidency what else is there for him to do? He cant run on issues, he
cant run on solutions, he cant run on his wonderful VP choice, and he cant
run on the peace and prosperity his party has delivered. Indeed, he has to run
from all those things. That leaves only one other option, which is for McCain
and his team of Rove proteges to do to Obama what Rove himself did to Kerry
that is, sow enough doubt about his trustworthiness in the minds of voters to
make them hold their noses and default to the seemingly (but not really) safe
choice of the seemingly (but not really) known quantity.
But its just not working anymore. In fact, so much is it not working anymore,
that nowadays you have regressive politicians and pundits renouncing their own
team for trying it. Where were these folks back in 1998 when a group of
serious and serial philanderers impeached a president for lying about a blow
job? Where were they when Rove and Bush told South Carolinians that McCain had
fathered a child with a black mistress, or ridiculed Al Gore for supposedly
having claimed to have invented the Internet? Where were they in 2002, when
Saxby Chambliss, another Vietnam war avoider, ran ads morphing the face of
triple-amputee Vietnam vet Max Cleland into those of Osama bin Laden and Saddam
Hussein? And where were they when Rove and Bush were swift-boating Kerry in
2004? Ill tell you where. They were cheering it all on.
Not so much now. Dylan once said you dont have to be a weatherman to know
which way the wind blows, but in 2008 youd have to be an inter-galactic
astronaut or the doorkeeper for Cheneys underground bunker to not know. And
so the regressive right blovitoriate is splitting before our very eyes, into
two camps. One is the unreconstructed Neanderthal set, like William Kristol
and Victor Davis Hanson, who cant quite believe what theyre seeing (But this
cant be right we own the presidency!), who thought the Sarah Palin pick was
just plain inspired, and who are encouraging McCain to stop pussyfooting around
already. Kristol, for example, watching it all just melt away, has been
furiously trying to find a gambit to keep the regressive dream alive. First he
advised McCain to go all Rove on Obama, which McCain did, sending Palin out to
describe That One as having palled around with terrorists. Unreal. You know
youre in deep shit when Sarah Palin is your voice of moral authority (her
best line yet has been her claim this week to be relieved that she has been
fully exonerated by the Alaska legislatures corruption probe, which in fact
flat-out accused her of breaking the law by abusing power for personal gain).
Anyhow, having realized that Ayers accusations are actually diminishing
McCains popularity rather than enhancing it, Kristol is now calling for McCain
to fire everyone on the staff and for the competent McCain and Palin to just
do constant press conferences until election day. Nevermind that allowing
Palin to talk to the press or public in any unstructured environment would put
McCain in danger of being on the ugly side of a fifty-state sweep right now.
(You think Im kidding? McCain is up a whopping six percent in Georgia at the
moment, eight percent in Mississippi, and one percent in North Carolina, home
of Jesse Helms. Hes currently losing by two points in that bastion of leftist
fomentation, that revolutionary hotbed, the Peoples Republic of North
Dakota.) Perhaps the most amusing line of this entire election cycle came from
the McCain campaign staff, (perhaps slightly miffed by the suggestion that they
all lose their jobs), who claimed that Kristol, of all people, has now drunk
from the cup of Obamania. Wow. Who needs a dictionary definition for paranoia
when youve got that to work with?
The other great line that Kristol floated as a rationale for voters to choose
McCain, and a theme of late among the drowning right-wing punditocracy, is that
McCain should argue for votes by saying that he will be there to block what is
sure to be a Democratic and wait for it now liberal (oooooooh!!) Congress.
Lets leave aside the obvious and traditional solution to such a quandary,
which is that McCain could instead simply encourage voters to choose
Republicans all up and down the ticket (could there be something toxic about
the R-word in 2008?). But even apart from that rather obvious bit of logical
lunacy, what sort of frighteningly vapid bonehead do you have to be to think
that divided government is a winning notion in 2008? I mean, raise your hand
if you think that what Americans want right now, in the middle of multiple
crises, including one which is destroying their retirement savings and
threatening their jobs, is a gridlocked
government in which Congress passes legislation shot down by the presidents
veto pen, and the president proposes solutions ignored by a Congress controlled
by the other party. Do they really pay these guys big bucks to pen this sort
of drivel? These morons are the pundicratic equivalents of Wall Streets
equally brilliant masters of the universe, only in six figures instead of nine.
Take, for example, Victor Davis Hanson, who says that, since the campaigns of
previous GOP nominees ranging from the racism of the Willie Horton project to
the swiftboating of war heroes were worse than the present transgressions,
therefore McCain as a vicious campaigner is a complete fabrication, but,
again, a brilliant subterfuge on the part of Team Obama that, in fact, has run,
via appendages, the far more vicious race. Yeah, Cindy McCain said that too,
arguing that Obama has run the dirtiest campaign in American history. I
suppose if you find trouncing her husband to be dirty politics, shes right.
But the notion that a campaign which is trying to win by tying the other guy to
an unknown former radical who blew stuff up when the candidate was eight years
old is somehow not running a vicious campaign is so big a stretch that not even
a lot of regressives will make it anymore.
Nevermind that the education commission that both Obama and Ayers served on was
a project of the Annenberg family, huge supporters of Reagan and, yes, one John
McCain. And nevermind that that means that the Annenbergs, and McCain, and all
the conservative members of the commission have, by the same logic, palled
around with terrorists at least as much Obama. Oops.
But, for my personal favorite, theres that famous political philosopher, Ted
Nugent (better know to some as a horrid screaming shred-metal rock singer, or
an enthusiastic murderer of animals), who advises McCain to go all Reagan and
tell the people once again that government is the problem, not the solution.
Yep, just as every American is scrambling for a lifeboat in an economic
Category 5, and even the Bush administration is doing its very best impression
of V. I. Lenin by plunging the government deep into economic interventions, he
literally advises McCain to Tell us the federal government has no business in
the home loan industry and that you will take our economy away from the
Treasury Department bureaucrats and give it back to the bankers, stockbrokers
and company leaders that have made our economy thrive since Alexander Hamilton
served at Treasury. Hey, Ted, you forgot pedophiles and serial murderers on
your list of popular people
right now! Stockbrokers? Yes! CEOs? Yes! Oh please, John McCain, please.
Please sing their praises in the closing weeks of the campaign. Just because
Ted Nugent seems like the very antithesis of a thoughtful political theorist,
just because he seems like a metal-headed rocker who has turned it up to eleven
once too many times, I guarantee you, John, that he is not. Your can win the
presidency if youll just follow his advice and talk incessantly about all the
heroic stockbrokers and CEOs youll put in your cabinet! This will really
resonate with American voters right now!! Maybe you could even pardon some of
those Enron guys and put them to work running the country. (Again.)
Meanwhile, the other faction of the wrong-wingers are leaving the sinking ship
as quick as they can and hoping nobody notices. Like David Brooks, for
example, who called Palin a fatal cancer to the Republican Party and is
otherwise similarly leaving behind his old comrades on the right in article
after article he authors. Or Frank Schaeffer, who describes himself as a
lifelong Republican, [who] worked to get [McCain] elected instead of George W.
Bush in 2000, but who now writes: John McCain: If your campaign does not
stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and
portraying Mr. Obama as not one of us, I accuse you of deliberately feeding
the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore
of potentially instigating violence. Ouch. Or, Christopher (son of William
F.) Buckley, who has endorsed Obama, only to be driven out of the National
Review, the conservative
journal famously launched by his father back (to the future) at a time when no
one was listening to such gibberish.
According to Young Buck, hes been effectively fatwahed by the conservative
movement ever since his act of great apostasy. Thats a great line, as was
the entirety of Buckleys hilariously accurate and embarrassingly realistic
script for Thank You For Smoking. Memo to regressives: Its not a real good
idea to piss off people with such sharp skewering knives. Meanwhile, welcome
to the sanity club, Chris. We hope youll stay a while. Youll always be
welcome among the fast-exploding ranks of the reality-based community.
So grim has the McCain campaign become, and so diminished are the fortunes of
the regressive right, that people are jumping ship now as if they owned stock
in General Motors. And why wouldnt they? This last week in particular has
been one of the most horrible ever in American politics. You could start with
the fact that a grossly under-qualified nominee for Vice President is already
nearly being indicted for abuse of power, and she hasnt even hit Washington
yet. So far, thats just a reflection on the grossly under-honorable man who
selected her, purely to benefit his own career aspirations. But when you add
in the fierce devotion that Palin engenders among the legions of the scary
right, you can really get depressed.
All of this was on such full display this week that even John Say Anything
McCain seemed taken aback at one or two events. I think he realized just who
it is that his campaign is attracting nowadays. I think he realized his
complicity in fomenting such visceral hatred that we now see people attending
rallies of one of the two mainstream parties in America screaming out
terrorist and kill him with respect to the man theyre introducing as
Barack Hussein Obama. I think he was a little shell-shocked that not only
members of his own party were publicly rebuking him, but civil rights hero John
Lewis compared him to the racist monster George Wallace. This would be
especially devastating if it had occurred in an America where people paid
attention to politics, since McCain had just recently named Lewis as one of a
few people whose advice he would seek out were he president. That comment,
uttered just last August, was already an odd
remark, since Lewis is a liberal Democrat, and McCain once opposed making
Martin Luther Kings birthday a holiday, and because Lewis let on directly
afterwards as to how McCain had never sought him out even for small talk during
the two decades theyve both served in Congress. But now, of course, its even
more absurd, because the first bit of advice Lewis offered caused the McCain
camp to go insane and demand that Obama rebuke Lewis, even though the two have
nothing particularly to do with one another.
The truth is that a guy who once possessed a broad reputation for decency and
integrity, deserved or not, came to grips this week with the realization that
he is not only losing his last bid ever for the presidency, but that he is
losing his honor as well. McCain knows that he will not only go down in
history as a two-time presidential loser, but also as yet another
hate-mongering, horror-show, thug graduate from the
McCarthy/Nixon/Atwater/Rove/Schmidt school for the criminally insane. The once
proud John McCain, filled up with generations of military values extolling the
crucial importance of gentlemanly honor, has become just another ill-smelling
hack. Worse yet, hes a loser hack, who will never have the chance to
rehabilitate himself. At least when George H.W. Bush pissed all over his
country he won the race, and got to join that most exclusive club, and then he
had four years to make people mostly forget about Willie Horton. McCain, on
the other hand, has bungled his way into the full-on nightmare vision of a
lost election coupled with lost integrity.
But McCain owns this Shakespearean tragedy in full. Part of me is a bit sad to
say that, remembering the John McCain who once had the honesty to note that
America has the best Congress money can buy, or who called the freaks of the
religious right agents of intolerance. But most of me is no longer sad.
George W. Bush and the regressive movement have devastated the country and
planet where I live, and their motive for doing so was ultimately just simple
greed. McCain has spent the past eight years facilitating that monstrous and
monstrously lethal mass rape. It is therefore fitting that a man who was once
highly respected should experience ruin not once, but twice, at the hands of a
moral dwarf like George W. Bush. In 2000, Bush used the scummiest of scummy
techniques to emasculate John McCain, a man who was infinitely his better in
every respect. Now again today, the Chimpster-in-Chief sits in his Oval
Office, smirking as ever,
sociopathically oblivious as the legacy of his two terms both of which
McCain actively helped him win sealing the senators fate for a second time.
The number of sacrificial victims to the fragile ego of one George Walker Bush
is astonishing to contemplate. Its staggering to imagine that one
individuals personal childhood inadequacies could wreak so much havoc on an
entire planet, but indeed they have.
>From Tony Blairs career to the lives of a million Iraqis. From Americans
>wallets to their countrys very honor. From environmental destruction to the
>Republican Party itself. All relegated to the ash heap of history.
John McCain is only the latest to be added to that list.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University
in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles
([EMAIL PROTECTED]), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him
to respond. More of his work can be found at his website,
www.regressiveantidote.net.
http://www.counterpunch.org/green10202008.html
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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