Feb
29
Two sides of McCain
February 29, 2008 |
There have been a couple of incidents this weak which reveal something about John McCain’s character. Depending on your perspective, they reassure you that he is a man of honorable character, or they show him to be somewhat sanctimonious and thin-skinned. In the end, they show a bit of all that and more.
The first is the celebrated of disavowal of talk-radio host Bill Cunningham. It was perhaps, as Captain Ed dubbed it, his Sister Souljah moment.
McCain wasn’t on stage nor in the building when Cunningham made the comments, but he quickly distanced himself from them and the talk show host after finishing his speech. McCain spoke to a couple hundred people at Memorial Hall in downtown Cincinnati.”I apologize for it,” McCain told reporters, addressing the issue before they had a chance to ask the Arizona senator about Cunningham’s comments.
“I did not know about these remarks but I take responsibility for them. I repudiate them,” he said. “My entire campaign I have treated Senator Obama and Senator (Hillary Rodham) Clinton with respect. I will continue to do that throughout this campaign.
McCain called both Democrats “honorable Americans” and said “I want to dissociate myself with any disparaging remarks that may have been said about them.”
Asked whether the use of Obama’s middle name—the same as former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein—is proper, McCain said: “No, it is not. Any comment that is disparaging of either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama is totally inappropriate.”
This happened a few days ago, and has been mulled over in various quarters of the talk show circuit and the blogosphere. At the time, I happened to think McCain did the right, and I still think that he’s right on the merits. On one level it seems odd that we should refrain from calling out a candidate by his middle name - after all, it’s just a middle name. But it is disingenuous to claim that one is using the full name for innocent purposes. Clearly the purpose is to draw a connection to the former Iraqi dictator, and to imply that Obama might in fact be some type of Muslim sleeper agent who is ready to inflict Sharia law the moment he is elected. McCain was right to distance himself from such behavior, and I do believe that it shows that he wants to go about things the right way.
Still, there’s something a little disquieting about the way in which he went about it. He actually did not hear what Cunningham said himself, but was rather informed about it from other sources. He then proceeded to attack a man who had come out in order to support him without first checking into the matter.
Now, Cunningham has a history of making stupid comments, and his subsequent declaration of support for Obama shows what a shallow man he is. But it seems that McCain could have handled the situation a bit differently.
The second incident occurred yesterday on a blogger conference call that McCain held yesterday, and both Jim Geraghty and Paul Mirengoff report on what was said. Here’s Geraghty’s account:
Paul at Powerline: Will wrote that you refused to shake Brad Smith’s hand?
McCain: It’s true. This individual savaged me and my character and my integrity, on many written and spoken occasions. There was no reason for me to shake his hand. I’m not embarrassed. If someone attacks my character and integrity, I’m not going to shake his hand.
As Geraghty commented, this was not his finest answer. McCain acted like a petulent child when he refused to shake Smith’s hand, and his refusal to acknowledge his mistake was compounded by an even more petulent answer. I cannot claim to have read or heard everything Bradley Smith ever said about John McCain, but I have read his book and many of his opinion pieces, and I never detected that Smith had attacked McCain’s character and integrity. Smith simply opposes - rightly - McCain’s campaign finance reform measures. His critiques have always been well-reasoned and done without malice.
Evidently McCain believe that criticisms of him are attacks. That is most unfortunate. It’s even more unfortunate considering that he took the high road when asked about George Will’s column that had savaged him earlier.
Paul at Powerline: George Will’s column – very critical on campaign finance “towering moral vanity.”
McCain: Will has a bimonthly custom, or maybe now at least twice a month that he has to beat up on campaign finance reform. I understand that and that will be an area of disagreement. I admire and respect him as a voice of conservatism, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. We have taken soft money out of the game. The 527s have nothing to do with campaign finance reform, they have to do with parts of federal law that the FEC will not enforce. I hope there are some areas we agree on.
Sadly McCain couldn’t have found that same tact when it came to Bradley Smith.
Part of me now wonders McCain’s attitude towards Smith stems from what he himself heard Smith say, or whether it is based on second-hand sources telling him what Smith says, as was the case with Cunningham. Either way, it does not speak well that McCain can be so often short-tempered and shrill. It also lends some credence to what Will said in his column - a column I actually thought was a bit unfair when I first read it. After all, if there’s someone who really shouldn’t be bemoaning another person for their supposed sanctimony, it’s George Will. However, I can’t help but think he has a point when he writes:
Although his campaign is run by lobbyists; and although his dealings with lobbyists have generated what he, when judging the behavior of others, calls corrupt appearances; and although he has profited from his manipulation of the taxpayer-funding system that is celebrated by reformers — still, he probably is innocent of insincerity. Such is his towering moral vanity, he seems sincerely to consider it theoretically impossible for him to commit the offenses of appearances that he incessantly ascribes to others.
Such certitude is, however, not merely an unattractive trait. It is disturbing righteousness in someone grasping for presidential powers.
Now there are limits to this sort of psychological evaluation. None of us really knows McCain, and we need to be wary of trying to impugn his motives. But you start putting some things together, and it starts to reveal a tremendous weakness, and one that goes beyond just his basic character, and you have to have an historical appreciation to understand why.
We have had crusader Presidents before - Presidents who have a certain air of sanctimony about them. Crusader personalities are by nature reformers. Reform is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but certainly conservatives have a tremendous understanding of the limits of the reform/progressive attitude.
Moreover, crusader personalities believe that those who question them are doing so only for low purposes. They bristle at criticsm - indeed they lash out at those who attack them. I have in mind, first and foremost, Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was a Progressive convinced that what he was carrying out the will of God. He refused to deal with his critics - in fact he lashed out at them as does McCain. Other reformist Presidents - Carter, LBJ, and, to a lesser degree, Teddy Roosevelt - were all relatively thin-skinned, morally vain individuals.
The more I look at McCain, the more I see of those types of personality in him, and I worry about what that portends even policy-wise for a McCain presidency.
Now, perhaps I am worrying over trivialities, and in a certain sense I hope that I am. But I’d be lying if I said that these incidents did not have me thinking twice about John McCain.
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