2008 McCain's Temperament Fails Again

realclearpolitics.com ^ | September 23, 2008 | George Will

[Checkers]

"The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said without even looking around." -- "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

WASHINGTON -- Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked The Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

To read the Journal's details about the depths of McCain's shallowness on the subject of Cox's chairmanship, see "McCain's Scapegoat" (Sept. 19, Page A22). Then consider McCain's characteristic accusation that Cox "has betrayed the public's trust."

Perhaps an old antagonism is involved in McCain's fact-free slander. His most conspicuous economic adviser is Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who previously headed the Congressional Budget Office. There he was an impediment to conservatives, including then-Congressman Cox, who as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee persistently tried and generally failed to enlist CBO support for "dynamic scoring" that would estimate the economic growth effects of proposed tax cuts.

In any case, McCain's smear -- that Cox "betrayed the public's trust" -- is a harbinger of a McCain presidency. For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive -- there are no other people. McCain's Manichean worldview drove him to

[Darkwolf377]

Very well said.

When I hear that people don't like seeing angry politicians, I despair for this country. We NEED an angry person who will go into DC and burn down all this bipartisan crap that lets Chris Dodd and Barney Frank get out there without being reamed by the media for their parts in this mess. I certainly don't think McCain is going to be the one to scream at them--they are, after all, Democrats--but he's CAPABLE of it. Maybe when he's president he will start attacking Dems, too, even though they're from his own party. (Kidding.)

The media are trying to soooooothe us, make us think we want a National Mr. Rogers. I want someone who'll look into that debate camera and say "I'm as sick of this crap as you, let me go clean up the mess."

[NVDave]

Because Obama lives in the security of not having a clue what a derivative, counter-party risk or a TED spread is.

He’s utterly ignorant about the significance of what is happening in the market, and that’s abundantly clear. He’s just parroting what his advisors tell him to say.

McCain, on the other hand, has advisors that have told him, or realized for himself, that Cox’s moves on last Friday make Cox appear as a rank amateur to the rest of the financial world. The idiot banned shorting on 799 financial stocks in such a way that left market-makers in options, swaps and single-stock futures stranded, wondering “WTF?” and “Thanks, for putting me out of business too, Cox.”

As of this morning, the SEC has to walk back their short-selling ban on market makers, then they added about 30 more names to the list of Those That Shall Not Be Shorted, which as of now includes GE and GM.

The SEC looks like one of those run down cars that lurches into town, rams into a streetlight and a bunch of circus clowns erupt out of the car and start accosting citizens on the street.

Cox needs to be fired. Now.

[nathanbedford]

Sometime ago I posted the following which I think provides the background for the conclusions reached by George Will. The last part of my original post is missing so I have added the following in italics which keeps the sense of the original post in an abbreviated form and which reaches toward the very conclusion which George Will expressed.

Understanding John McCain

McCain's Vietnam experience was so shattering that he sees the world through a new lens, the experience so profound that he has emerged from it with a lifelong commitment to country. This gives credibility to McCain's claim that he is a maverick, beholden not to party but to principle and country. This claim to independence is necessary in a political climate in which the present occupant of the White House is found to be unsatisfactory by nearly three out of four Americans. So, the narrative explains why a voter can believe at John McCain is different from ordinary politicians, especially ordinary Republican politicians, and they can't believe he should be trusted to embark on a new course away from current administration policies.

At the end of his acceptance speech, McCain recited how he came to be utterly broken but then restored, even redeemed with a new commitment to service to others when a fellow prisoner urged him by prison telegraph not to quit and die but instead to carry on the fight out of respect for his comrades who even then were carrying on the fight for him.

Psychologists and scholars of religious experience, especially Christian scholars, have long been aware of the empowering release generated by total surrender of the will. One can describe this in psychological language, or in Biblical language, or even in evangelical idiom.

Whatever language one uses to describe these epiphanies there is no question that very often they are real and long lasting. Psychologists would begin to explain the phenomenon by reference to the ego. An Old Testament scholar might think in terms of the first and second Commandments and the muscular faith which follows adherence to them. Christians speak of dying to the self, picking up the cross and following the Savior to become a new man-to be born again. Perhaps the most famous example is recounted in the Book of Acts which tells that Saul of Tarsus was physically knocked off his horse by the Holy Spirit. Saul experiences an epiphany, Saul becomes Paul, and is transformed from a murderous persecutor of Christians to a fully committed martyr who becomes the great evangelist of the early church, indomitable in spirit, inflexible in commitment, and-like the other disciples- utterly fearless. Significantly, Paul, the newbie Christian, does not shrink later from taking on Peter the acknowledged leader of the disciples "to his face" to dispute matters of doctrine.

In contemporary history we have the example of George Bush and his transforming encounter with Reverend Billy Graham. Indeed, we have the Reverend Billy Graham's own epiphany in the forest. We have the numberless examples recited daily in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is from the success of this group that countless so-called "12 step" groups have been formed to apply successfully the same empowering message of surrender.

The important thing to understand about these epiphanies is that when they are genuine they are often life-long and tremendously empowering. Lives really are transformed forever. Criminals go straight, alcoholics stay sober, and the miserable are made happy. In fact, these newly born spirits enjoy their new condition so much that they seek ways to prolong the joy they have obtained in their moment of sweet release. Almost universally, these people find that service to others is the surest way to prolong that wonderful feeling of well-being.

Isolated, sick, starved and beaten beyond human endurance, John McCain ultimately broke and signed a confession which he mistakenly assumed amounted to a betrayal of his country. Who was this wretched man who lay so anguished in that cell? In his memoir and in his speech, McCain described himself as a kind of a hotshot jet jock, a screwup, a discipline problem in school, and an accomplished accumulator of demerits as a midshipman. Evidently, he was also an enthusiastic swordsman. In short, he was an arrogant SOB. Now, in that cell, he had fallen far. The classic description of the crushing of the ego. At this pivotal moment came the means of his redemption via the prison telegraph: Service to others out of love of country. In his speech McCain declared:

"And I wasn't my own man anymore, I was my country's"

And now we know the rest of the story. This is not to say that John McCain was instantly sanctified in all respects, far from it. He still had to swim his way out of a giant mental, moral and spiritual hangover from his ordeal. His screwing around would cost him his marriage before he could swim to shore. Even today, the old self bursts out in temper. But when one lays this template over the rest of John McCain’s career, one should have little difficulty accepting the story as being essentially true (I for one believe it) and to accept it as a convincing explanation of his career and his conception of his role as president.

Before considering the implications of all of this for conservatives, it is instructive to consider what it means to liberals. [And to compare it to Barak Obama's story]

In a word: "nothing." Liberals do not see it because they cannot see it. They simply do not get it. The whole idea of gaining empowerment through surrendering is as psychologically repugnant to liberals as is the idea of accepting a higher authority in their lives. Consider the Democrat party to be a gigantic creaking contrivance to legitimatize liberals in their insatiable quest to feed their egos. The job of this machine is to provide rationalizations. The obvious examples are sex without consequences and abortion without guilt. These examples demonstrate that the rationalization machine can be quite deadly as it kills 3 to 4 million babies a year. The pernicious doctrines emanating from The Frankfurt School such as moral relativism, feminism, and critical theory find application not just in cultural issues like abortion which kill babies but across the board, touching all government policy and every aspect of our lives.

To repeat, the whole purpose of this Democrat apparatus is to turn thinking on its head and provide a language to liberals so they can continue to play God (especially with other people's lives). Liberals will never about-face and cast away everything that feeds their ego addictions. That is why we hear them using English words but it comes out as a different language. What about the implications for us conservatives of John McCain's epiphany?

Well that of course depends on how John McCain defines putting country first. It's quite clear that he is not replaced his giant ego trip with a classy Reaganesque conservative philosophy. The danger for conservatives is that John McCain has no identifiable framework, no principled political philosophy upon which to identify the nation's interest.

The great danger to us conservatives, and of course to the nation as a whole, is that John McCain operates ad hoc.

This is what George Will has been alluding to in his column and I think he is right.

[roamer_1]

Sore losers who can't "let go" and effectively openly campaign for the opposition, have no place in FR.

Bullcrap.

FR is a Conservative site, *not* a Republican one. McCain is no Conservative. To suggest that no voice can be lifted here against him, in defense of Conservatism, and in defense of actual Conservatives is simply absurd.

As to your silly "Sore losers who can't let go", it is equally asinine. I supported Hunter, and only Hunter in the primaries. I now support Keyes because he is the only Reagan Conservative running.

It is not a matter of being a sore loser. It is a matter of principle, as it always is, and as it always will be. Just because a Globalist won the Republican primary, that means he gets the Conservative vote? Such a statement is ridiculous! Just because he is forced into a position where he starts talking like a conservative and picks a conservative VP, that means I now must vote for him?

I don't think so, Scooter.

If I must bow to the wisdom of the "collective" and I must hold my tongue when I disagree with the "collective", then the "collective", and you along with it, are just as bad as the damnable liberals, and probably the same damn thing.

All hail the mighty rhinestone "R"! rah. rah.

McCain is a traitorous bastard, and his true colors just keep shining through. There is no condition under which he will get my vote, nor should he get any other. Those Conservatives who would vote for him do so out of fear or false hope, and will live to regret it.

[cherry]

its because you are in a circle...we've got the nutty Ron Paul libertarians and we've got the evil leftist donkeys and then we've got the self righteous RINOs and the selfdescribed "intellectuals" who can't stand that a John McCain a NON LAWYER and Sarah Palin a NON LAWYER is actually making a go of it....

this is ridiculous...

THE ENEMY IS WITHIN OUR OUR CAMP.....

THE ENEMY IS HUSSEIN....THE ENEMY IS GOING TO KILL EVERYTHING WE LOVE IN AMERICA....

WHAT THE HELL IS SO HARD TO EXPLAIN ABOUT THAT?

[cherry]

and you know what....after 8 yrs of wimpy Bush govt I want someone with a little fire, a little passion....

[cherry]

yes, those days are gone...I for one will go after anyone that pops in "coincedentally" to diss good polls, to embrace bad polls or like you, to embrace the enemy....

its the time of choosing, and you are choosing a communist terrorist loving Chicago mobster puppet....

you will be called on it every time...

I understand DU is taking applications.

[cherry]

so lets just let the communist have what’s left eh?

[cherry]

shove off....there's other forums for your type.....this is the forum for fighting the good fight with what we have...

and until the coming of Christ, we'll just keep doing that....fighting the good fight every day, every week, every year....

and it may not be a pretty fight and it might not be a fair fight or even a noble fight, but its still a fight...

go hide under the kitchen table and let the real men folk handle this okay?

[roamer_1]

go hide under the kitchen table and let the real men folk handle this okay?

Hell, no. If you want your socialist so damn bad, go vote for a democrat.

[mwilli20]

Up to the conclusion the article was pretty good. Timing was wrong, these are the kind of things you write about your candidate, and you seek changes in their behavior after the election.

Then comes the conclusion. What planet is George on? Is that what separates Obama from a good president for the USA? A little lack of experience which he can gain in office? Not the guranteed liberal judges he would appoint? Not the fact that he is all but an avowed socialist? Not the shenanigans we are likely to see form his yet not totally discovered litter of siblings? Not the guaranteed advancement of abortion rights, gay rights, political correctness, and affirmative action? Not the advancement of the greatest hoax in human history, Global Warming?

This level of ignorance borders on stupidity. So much so that I suspect it is not ignorance but rather the feeble atempt at a backstab from a traitor to the cause. Shame on you George!

[truthnotspin]

" It's already here, regardless of Obama. Socialism, mercantilism, fascism, statism, totalitarianism...it has many names and many forms, but at its core, it desires that one group force itself on another group, that one group deny to another group life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The worst part: it arrived gradually. It came in the middle of the night when folks were asleep and nobody was watching. It came with a whimper and a sigh, not a bang. It came when people, wringing their hands, decided to be "pragmatic" instead of standing up for themselves, began to choose "the lesser of two evils." Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of opening the door to "Socialism"...which is now here to stay."

BRAVO! Very well said.

[truthnotspin]

Checkers said:

“There was a time when John McCain was the opposition.”

To which you replied:

“That time has come and gone.”

You tell him pubbie. McCain may be a bum, but he’s our bum.

/sarc

Should all jnow ust fall into line and support the man that we fought for so many good reasons because he is an “R”?

[JDoutrider]

BTTT

[BufordP]

No matter how the Nov elections turns out - the next 4+ years are going to really suck!

[EBH]

Indeed doesn’t 0bama get mad at tough questions. Heck he’ll even yell at old ladies!

[Cap Huff]

“Every error of this campaign already has a loud speaker NYTWPWTCNNNBSMSNBS>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Where is the 0nes ??”

Indeed. What we need more of are voices like the lady in Pennsylvania who gave the msm a piece of her mind. It would be great if that got to be a tradition at these Townhall Meetings.

[Cap Huff]

He kind of came unglued when asked about his relationship with Ayres.

[longtermmemmory]

no George Will swings and hits only air.

McCain is a first class nit wit. He is still for amnesty, he still is oblivious.

The base is NOT voting for mccain. The base is voting for the CONSERVATIVE VP pick.

McCain is a drag on the ticket.

[rabscuttle385]

so lets just let the communist have what’s left eh?

Beg your pardon...which of the two Big Government freaks running for office were you referring to: the one with the (R) or the one with the (D)?