Posted on 05/23/2004 2:33:44 PM PDT by RWR8189
AT LONG LAST, after a grueling primary season attacking president George W. Bush as pro-life and too bellicose, the Democrats have come up with their dream candidate. And wouldn't you know, he's a pro-life Republican who's keen on the war in Iraq. Just what they wanted, you might say sarcastically, but it turns out that they do: What they want is John McCain, Arizona's long-term Republican senator, whom they want to pair with their nominee, John F. Kerry, in what would be the mother of all balanced tickets: right and left, West and East, outspoken and "nuanced," galvanic and dull. Bob Kerrey wants him, and so does Joe Biden. The New York Times played it up in a big front-page story. "A dream team," a veteran liberal says. All agree he would be a blast of fresh air, a shot in the arm, an adrenaline rush that would shake up the system. Left unsaid is the prospect he might be all too exciting, a gust of fresh air that blows out windows, and leaves broken trees in its wake.
McCain, indeed, might prove quite a headache. Here are five reasons why.
(1) IT'S ALL ABOUT HIM. The minute the announcement is made, Kerry ceases to matter. McCain would overshadow anyone, and Kerry, who already has a tendency to blend into the wallpaper, would become a bit player in his own campaign. The Kerry-Bush face-off would instead become round two in the Bush-McCain grudge match, a continuation of the 2000 GOP primaries in Michigan and South Carolina. No one would show the slightest interest in a debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry; or between McCain and Dick Cheney. They would want a brawl between Bush and McCain. Pundits would obsess on their psyches and motives. The partisan battle would become an ego war between two feuding Republicans who tend to agree on most major issues. Kerry would be lucky by the third of November if anybody remembered his name.
(2) THE VICE PRESIDENT RULES. Dick Cheney is already famous as the most powerful No. 2 in American history, but if a Kerry-McCain ticket should be swept into office, the roles of the president and his ranking subordinate would be reversed. For the first time, a president would owe his office to his vice president, and both men would know it. Would a Vice President McCain then sit quietly by and wait to be called on? What have you been drinking? This would be a co-presidency, if not a McCain one, in everything but its formal description. What's more, an electorate that voted mainly for McCain would expect him to wield genuine power, would back him in any disputes with a President Kerry, and feel deceived if he didn't prevail. So could McCain. "We could see the third vice president to resign in American history," says Larry Sabato. "The policy difference is just too outstanding. He could resign on principle, like John C. Calhoun." Would an electorate that went to bed with a charming, charismatic, irreverent, center-right maverick be happy to wake up in the morning with a dour and depressing doctrinaire liberal? Or would divorce papers be served?
(3) TEMPERAMENT TANTRUMS. Then there is the little matter of McCain's personality. No major figure since Theodore Roosevelt has been less suited by temperament for the vice president's job. He is not left, right, or center so much as a devout contrarian, a flamboyant maverick, cut out by fate to butt heads with authority, never so happy as when giving the finger to those in charge. There is a good reason why McCain is not now the president, and it has nothing to do with South Carolina: He has made a career out of lobbing grenades at the base of his party, with which he quite often agrees. Who else would go out of his way to annoy potential supporters? Who else would go into Virginia and launch an attack on social conservatives? In a Republican primary?
Contrast this with the conduct of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rudy Giuliani, who do have differences with social conservatives, but who therefore take great care not to insult them: They disagree, differ politely, and change the subject to the numerous issues on which they find common ground. McCain, on the other hand, glories in such conflict. Does anyone think he will stop this if he comes to change sides? As a Republican, he has been amusing himself (and the Democrats) by giving fits to George W. Bush and the establishment, largely because they are the establishment. How long, in an establishment run by the Democrats, before he starts doing the same to them?
(4) IDENTITY CRISIS. John McCain might have been at home in a Democratic party run by Harry S. Truman, or by John F. Kennedy, another ribald and print-savvy war hero who McCain would have surely called "my dear friend." But to graft the head of McCain onto the body of the current Democratic party is to perform an operation that risks organ-rejection. The party's base is pacifist, feminist, hostile to the use of American power, and suspicious of force. Its biggest sources of money and manpower are the teachers' unions and trial lawyers. Its articles of faith are unrestricted abortion and identity politics, and the groups that promote these are accustomed to veto power. How would they react to a pro-life Republican parachuted in behind their lines? Suppose they bit their tongues and tolerated him for the purpose of beating the president. If the experiment was successful, he would bring into their party millions of people indifferent or hostile to their views. The shape of the party would change, as would its center of gravity. If there were to be such a thing as McCain Democrats, they would be to the right of the rest of the party--more pro-life and pro-gun and libertarian, much more disposed to the uses of power abroad. Would the base fight back? Or--Hello, Ralph Nader!--would it start to move out? Under any scenario, today's party would crack, shift, or shatter. It might contract, or expand, but it would certainly not stay the same.
(5) DISSONANCE. The rationale for the Democrats in embracing McCain is the same one that energized the base in the primaries: the need to get rid of George Bush. Howard Dean harnessed this frenetic emotion, to which John Kerry pays tribute. But the problem is, on most of the issues that matter, McCain is not much like Dean or like Kerry, and very much more like . . . George W. Bush. Their personalities are even a little alike, which may be one reason they grate on each other. They are both conservative, but not wholly conventional: Bush breaks with tradition on spending and big government; McCain on issues like campaign finance reform. They are emotional patriots; bull-headed and willful. They're cocky. They swagger a little. They are not metrosexual. Neither has ever been tempted by Christophe or Botox. They like guy stuff, and fit in well in the same sort of venue; such as military bases, and lower-scale sporting events. Blue to the core, Kerry jets between mansions in Boston, Georgetown, Nantucket, and a ski lodge in Ketchum, Idaho. Bush and McCain spend their time in rural settings in the southwestern part of the country. Color them red.
Color them also fairly conservative, at least on the core issues. They are pro-life, if not militant, unperturbed by capital punishment, tend to think force solves a great many problems, and see few things in shades of gray. They are also unabashed advocates of American power, who believe this country has a great moral mission and role to play in the world. Nothing is more certain to enrage progressives, who would then find themselves in a dreadful dilemma--which of the two do they loathe more deeply, Bush's ideas or George Bush? If they hate Bush's ideas, they may choke on McCain, and then go third party. If they hate Bush himself, they may go with McCain, but at the cost of making their party more Bush-like, and cutting into their own hold on power. If they go with McCain, they become a war party, something their base must regard with true horror.
Democratic McCain enthusiasts may tell themselves he is just a device to get Kerry in power, but they overlook two facts: McCain would not be a "normal" vice president, and all men are mortal. Kerry likes dangerous sports and seems prone to accidents; one slip off the snowboard, and, as Mark Hanna once said of Theodore Roosevelt, "that damned cowboy is president of the United States." This is a fate to make Bush-haters tremble: They may vanquish their foe, but only by becoming like him. Nobody said life was fair.
Noemie Emery is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.
Brilliant, and I've been wondering how long it'd be till someone pointed out how inane the idea of a Kerry/McCain ticket is. This article should give every sincere liberal the reasons to think twice about power at any cost.
Then there's the fact that McCain would have to run as a candidate of a party that has deliberately set-out to ash can his campaign finance reform scheme. He'd get smacked inthe face with that by every reporter.
This might be a plan for the dems if they get a McCain on the Ticket: just use him to get a liberal-gumby-like Kerry into office, then run the show in mainstream Rat fashion. Then, if/when McCain resigns, they already have the office.
It's a bunch of BS.
1. McCain likes being on camera (Sunday Talk shows, etc.) too much to shrink into the vast darkness of the VicePresidency.
2. If a Kerry-McCain ticket did happen, and did win, if Kerry died, the Presidency would become Republican. The Dems haven't even considered that.
It's BS. It ain't gonna happen.
She's been one of my favorite authorw for years. Brillian writer...oddly enough this afternoon, I was channel surfing, C-span was rerunign an AEI/Weekly Standard symposium on the Bush's and she was speaking to the forum. The has apparently worked very hard to overcome a bad stuttering problem, and to egt up in front of a large public forum like that is admirable...
Bullseye.
It just doesn't matter to them at all that McCain has unequivicably said he would not accept a nomination. He actually laughed at it, but that does not seems to phase these crazy lunatics.
I'd be very surprised if McCain did this, bc if he lost, he'd be totally ostracized from the Republican Party, and he would not hold much power in the Dem party.
I find it a bit disheartening that the Democrats would want a Republican running with their candidate. It doesn't say much for McCains Republican values.
I've joined the Emery fan club! BTTT
Some more "magic" thinking by the Dems about McCain being the VP candidate but it isn't going to happen. He wouldn't risk the Senate balance by resigning, and he won't ever give up some of his hard-line conservative views.
I can never in a million years imagine McCain at the Dem convention in Boston. A lot of the extreme anti-war left-wingers i.e Deaniacs would lynch him first because he's pro-war. He would never be acceptable to them as a VP candidate, and they hold great power at the convention. They would ensure that Kerry loses the election if he does something so radical as pick McCain as his VP candidate.
How would McCain feel about his boss skirting campaign finance laws?
Would he be ok wit dat?
"He is not left, right, or center so much as a devout contrarian, a flamboyant maverick, cut out by fate to butt heads with authority, never so happy as when giving the finger to those in charge......He has made a career out of lobbing grenades at the base of his party, with which he quite often agrees........Who else would go into Virginia and launch an attack on social conservatives? In a Republican Primary?"
This is an excellent analysis of McCain. She seems to have his number.
See my post 15. There is a term "does not play well with others."
Anyone who seriously considers this a possibility should be checked for drug dependency.
This whole idea is inane. Does anyone for one moment think that the dems are going to allow a tax cutting, pro-lifer onto the ticket?
The Kerry/McCain - Cancer/Cancerer ticket? Never happen.
I just think they want a real war hero on their ticket (humor)
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