Posted on 12/02/2007 5:49:02 PM PST by mossyoaks
This is one in a series examining where the leading contenders vying for the Republican and Democratic parties' presidential nominations stand on the major issues. The series will run through early January when the state party caucuses and primaries begin. If presidential candidates were evaluated solely on the strength of their resumes or the quality of their character, it is likely that John McCain would be leading this year's pack of presidential hopefuls.
He is the only major candidate to have served in the military and one of the few candidates in recent history with firsthand experience of the horrors of war. Beyond his military record, he has 25 years of combined government service in the U.S. House of Representatives (1982-86) and the U.S. Senate (1986-present), and is currently the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He has proven his ability to reach across the partisan divide and achieve significant legislative accomplishments.
As for character, John McCain is in a league of his own. His legendary character was formed within the walls of Bancroft Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy and forged by his experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, where he was held captive for 5-and-a-half years and tortured at the hands of the North Vietnamese.
At a recent GOP debate, McCain made light of his ordeal by comparing his experience to Sen. Hillary Clinton's support for a publicly financed museum to commemorate the 1969 Woodstock Concert. McCain joked that he had heard about the concert but did not attend, as he was “tied up at the time,” to which the Republican candidates burst into laughter. While Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the others enjoyed the levity of the moment, McCain looked directly into the camera and with complete conviction declared that no one who supports such projects should be president of the United States. In an instant, the laughter melted into a standing ovation.
With McCain as the GOP candidate, there would be no accusations of an inflated military record, no hints of corruption, no innuendos of infidelity, no rumors of drug use or drunk driving, no questions of his work ethic and no assertions of flip-flopping on key issues. In many ways, McCain appears to be the ideal candidate for a nation involved in a global military conflict and hungry for effective, bipartisan leadership. His trouble gaining momentum in the Republican nominating contest has nothing to do with a lack of character or with inexperience. If nothing else, recent presidents of both parties have established that character issues and inexperience are not necessarily fatal flaws for presidential candidates. McCain's political sin has been his abundance of character and wealth of experience, not his lack of these most important attributes.
His commitment to core issues (what his detractors refer to as his stubbornness) has gained him the reputation as the “maverick of the Senate.” Without question, Sen. McCain has taken positions that are out of step with the current president and a certain wing of the Republican Party.
Most famously, McCain championed the Bi-Partisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002, better known as the McCain-Feingold reforms, which attempted to close loopholes in the outdated campaign finance system. The reform package was initially resisted by President Bush and immediately challenged by the leadership of the Republican Party. Mitch McConnell, then the Republican majority whip in the Senate, unsuccessfully challenged the law in the Supreme Court. While candidates for federal office have found gaping new holes in the reformed system, the most lasting impact of the reform package was to put pro-Bush Republicans on notice, the party was not theirs alone.
Immigration reform is another area in which McCain found himself at odds with the majority sentiment of his party. In 2006, he was a key supporter of a comprehensive immigration plan in the Senate that would have extended guest-worker passes to immigrants and established a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who have worked in the U.S. for five years. The Senate bill that McCain favored was opposed by a majority of Republicans in the Senate, while the House version, which focused on border security and offered no mechanism for citizenship, received strong support from Republicans in the House. The House and Senate were unable to overcome their differences and comprehensive immigration reform was set aside. McCain went back to his legislative work, minus a few Republican friends.
No issue reveals McCain's willingness to buck party pressures and public opinion more than his stance against Islamic extremists. While his strong support for the initial use of force in Afghanistan and Iraq might be expected from a Republican in the post-9/11 world, his actions after the initial stage of the conflict were anything but typical. When many on both sides of the aisle grew wary of the conflict and were looking for ways to distance themselves from “President Bush's war,” McCain was the first and most vocal supporter of sending additional troops to the region. Even with support for the war sharply declining in the American public, or perhaps because of the sharp decline, McCain saw little choice but to intensify his support.
One could almost hear the helicopters buzzing in his head, buzzing over the U.S. embassy in Saigon in 1975. For McCain, Iraq is the continuation of a war he has been fighting his entire life, a war to defend the United States against enemies foreign and domestic. To abandon the mission now might be politically expedient, but it is not an option for McCain.
The memory of Vietnam, scarred into his memory by the ropes of his North Vietnamese interrogators, was most certainly on his mind in 2005 when he opposed President Bush and fought for a ban on U.S. interrogation methods that he considers torture. He certainly did not launch his anti-torture crusade due to the support of Vice President Cheney, who lobbied against the measure, or due to the support from the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Duncan Hunter, who also opposed the bill, or due to the support of President Bush, who threatened to veto the legislation. Faced with the full wrath of McCain and growing public pressure from within the United States and from U.S. allies abroad, President Bush reluctantly signed the bill. Defiant to the end, Bush issued his now famous signing statement in which he reserved the right to waive the restrictions on torture, should they interfere with his broader constitutional powers. Once again McCain had defied his party leaders and landed a less than complete victory.
While he has never shied away from a just fight, it would be a mistake to assert that Sen. John S. McCain III, the son and grandson of admirals in the U.S. Navy, is something akin to a loose cannon. McCain is a conservative Republican, occupying the Arizona Senate seat once held by the father of modern conservatism, Barry Goldwater. Sen. McCain has an 82 percent lifetime rating by the American Conservative Union, suggesting that he has voted in favor of key conservative issues 82 percent of the time. McCain has a consistent pro-life voting record and regularly supports free trade, nuclear power, private Social Security savings accounts, school vouchers, the death penalty and controlling government spending.
McCain is a conservative, but not a Christian conservative in the Southern mold of George W. Bush. McCain has never enjoyed the support of the Republican Party's Christian base and in fact was burned by the Christian Right in his 2000 presidential bid, when a smear campaign caused him to lose the all-important South Carolina primary and eventually the nomination to the evangelical candidate of choice, his rival George W. Bush.
His position on social issues, in particular his position on gay rights, reveals the difference between McCain and the Christian right. In 2004, he broke with the president and leading Republicans by opposing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, a position that did not sit well with the party faithful. While he continues to oppose the constitutional amendment, he supports restrictions against gay marriage at the state level. Moreover, while he does not doubt that gay men and women have served the nation with honor in the military, he holds that open homosexuality in the military could weaken the armed forces and the country. Instead, he supports Bill Clinton's “don't ask/don't tell policy.”
These positions, based more on pragmatism than moral certainty, might very well reflect the majority position in America, but they do little to appease self-righteous interest groups on the right or left of the political spectrum.
A willful moderate in a world of political extremes, McCain is a lonely man these days. Gone is the “straight-talk express” of the 2000 campaign and the glowing media attention that came with his unconventional approach. Gone is the excitement of a candidate who successfully reached across party lines by appealing to moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats. Gone also are the supporters with deep pockets who funded his earlier campaign. What is left is a candidate who defined himself by resisting the policies of George W. Bush, only to be tainted by the one Bush policy he so outspokenly supported and Bush so fantastically blundered – Iraq. What is left is a man of unquestionable character and experience, and the realization that had McCain won in 2000, had his supporters in South Carolina been a little less principled, or had Bush's supporters been a little more honest; McCain would have done a better job.
Oh they get it. They just want it to go away.
There is no plus to leaving our men behind.
I mean, besides that stuff...what do you not like?
What would John McCain’s reasoning for purposely leaving Vietnam P.O.W.’s behind?
There is absolutely NO evidence whatsoever of that. He has spit in Republican's eyes when we practically ran the govt (Exec, legislature, judicial), and you think with a Democrat legislature he wont buckle continuously in order to get the NYT approval?
He'd raise taxes and increases social spending , and maybe hed be as aggressive as Bush on foreign policy, but maybe not (hes always looking to compromise).Romney, Guliani, Thompson, even Huckabee would be more "reliable", and at least as "tough".. We dont need a 71 yr old firecracker who is arrogant and an establishment status quo hack to boot. Theres better out there.
My thinking exactly and add his (and Ketsup's) stab in the back of the MIA's families!!
Already posted.
But I read that. But its not clear. Obvious to the article is a lack of intent of Kerry and the committee to continuet to pursue leads. But for what reason??
Now I’m conservative as the next FReeper, and a vet to boot, but is the reason is that the instigators and coveruppers are doing this to “get the war behind us”, and that alone?
Now if I was a family member of someone MIA, I’m sure I would be more forceful in demanding every lead followed up to ensure nothing is unturned and no one is left behind. But I fail to see any evidence of clear REASON and MOTIVE for doing so, other than those in power are wore out from the demands of the family members.
Yes it is a sensitive issue. What would those who could have their way, suggest as strategies to once and for all ensure everthing has been done? I’m listening. Is there some list of demands?
McCain supports illegal aliens, and then there is his CFR. His temper and his treatment of his first wife also indicate a lack of character. And he is creepy.
It is very clear. If the live sightings were more common knowledge, the embargo would be imposed. And the POWs/MIA families were and are still very vocal and forceful.
I don’t follow your list of demands question.
Well, he's short and ugly and he lied about the lettuce picking jobs. I'm still POed about the outright lies his staff tried to pass off on me about that. I called three of his offices and they all lied their rear ends off about it and it was evident in their voices they weren't comfortable doing it. But they did.
“I don’t follow your list of demands question.”
Well, to be perfectly honest, I don’t follow the POW/MIA issue as closely as it should be followed, but i was surmising that maybe POW/MIA action groups might have various ideas on how efforts could be made greater. Sort of like a “POW/MIA bill of rights”, such as 1) Under Secretary position of the VA, 2) Greater exchanges with Vietnam, 3) increasing federal funding for searches, 4)Internet postings of Sites last seen for Google Map searches, 5) $1 million dollar rewards for the return of each POW/MIA (heck, we do this for hunting down Al Queda, I guess we could do it for a missing american); 6) release of all military documentation related to missing servicemen; 7) Development of GPS-related technology for soldiers deployed overseas to track their movements because we did such a poor job in vietnam. We do it for pike passes, can’t we do it for transportation of bodies? 8) Allow more search teams to arrive; 8) Give me some time, I think of some more.
And then, you have a crap load of Senators and Congressmen sign off on it, put their names on an open letter to the President in newspapers demanding that it pass unconditionally. Demands like that.
>>>Well, to be perfectly honest, I don’t follow the POW/MIA issue as closely as it should be followed, but i was surmising that maybe POW/MIA action groups might have various ideas on how efforts could be made greater.
I pinged you to a number of threads this afternoon that should do fine in answering your questions.
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