By John H. Richardson
Norma Jean Roy
Ed. Note: This is the third installment of John H. Richardson's weekly column, "The Richardson Report." Browse an archive here.
Can everybody please get a grip?
It doesn’t matter that Sarah Palin’s wardrobe cost $150,000. It doesn’t matter that a Web site with ties to Al Qaeda endorsed John McCain. Joe Biden’s "mark my words" gaffe about Barack Obama being tested early in office doesn’t matter. Neither does John McCain’s "I couldn’t agree more" gaffe about the racism of people in Western Pennsylvania.
Some pundits say McCain lost his honor when his campaign started this crap about Obama palling around with terrorists. Others say Obama hit a low blow with his inaccurate line about McCain wanting to fight in Iraq for 100 years. It doesn’t matter. And what really doesn’t matter is anything Joe the Plumber has to say about economics. In fact, I’m not so sure Joe the Plumber’s ideas on plumbing would, um, hold water.
Two things do matter: the war and the economy. Okay, maybe there’s a third: the Supreme Court. For that, I’ll refer you to the third part of the incredibly eloquent endorsement of Obama by the editors of Esquire. For the rest of why McCain’s Bizarro, plumber-laden realities don’t hold water with America’s real issues today, here’s my bottom line (plus a Palin-induced reality check):
1. Dr. Surgelove, or How McCain Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Iraq
John McCain is a war hero. He risked his campaign to support the surge. He took a principled stand against torture. These things are extremely admirable. But when it comes to Iraq, it’s scary how often he uses the words "victory" and "honor." Case in point, from a campaign stop in May: "I will never surrender in Iraq. Our American troops will come home with victory and with honor."
True, McCain doesn’t say such things so much anymore. He prefers to focus on Joe the Plumber and on the surge. But the surge is a tactic. The strategy was to roll back rogue states. The strategy was to put the big foot down in Iraq and scare the crap out of the Iranians and the Syrians and Hezbollah.
And that didn’t work out so well. The Iranians are stronger than ever, Hezbollah is practically running Lebanon, and the Bush administration is negotiating a plan for us to leave Iraq with our tail between our legs -- and even that is no guarantee that Iraq will stay peaceful five minutes after we leave. The strategy has failed, and failed spectacularly, but McCain and his cheerleaders on the right are too obsessed with "victory and honor" to admit it.
As Jeffrey Goldberg suggested recently in his intimate and thoughtful portrait of McCain for The Atlantic, all this is rooted in one of the most persistent delusions of the far right: the belief that America could have won the Vietnam war with just a little bit more effort.
McCain’s champions like to point out that he’s resisted foreign entanglements in places like Somalia. Even The New York Times described him this weekend as reflective and again as not the kind of "neoconservative idealist, who would promote American values anywhere and everywhere." But the fact remains that McCain started talking about "rogue state rollback" long before 9/11. The day after the attacks, he went on ABC and said that invading Afghanistan or killing Osama Bin Laden wouldn’t be enough -- that we would have to attack a "network" of terrorist sympathizers that included Iraq, Iran and Syria. A month later, he said on CNN that "very obviously, Iraq is the first country." In January 2002, he made his views even more explicit on an aircraft carrier on the Arabian sea: "Next up, Baghdad."
None of these philosophies have changed. McCain’s chief foreign policy advisor is Randy Scheunemann, a passionate supporter of the Iraq war who first started pushing for an invasion in 1998, said there was "no doubt" that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, helped Donald Rumsfeld plan the war, fought giving any role to the U.N., and promoted Ahmed Chalabi. Another top advisor is William Kristol, who recently compared Obama to Neville Chamberlain and said he would have stood by "as U.S. interests were sacrificed and U.S. honor besmirched."
If Neville Chamberlain is going to go down in history as the guy who appeased Hitler, then John McCain has to go down in history for promoting the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history.
And the scariest part is what McCain might do next. Consider what he told Goldberg: "While we don’t go around launching preemptive strikes all the time, we can’t afford to wait until a terrorist organization, or a nation which is an avowed enemy of the United States, has the capability to use weapons of mass destruction." Sound reasonable? Look at the words more closely, and think about the Cuban Missile Crisis. By McCain’s standards, the world would have ended already.
2. Bizarro Reagan and the Free Lunch Party’s Economic Katrina 2.0
As far as financial meltdowns go these days, all a sane person can really do is sit with his mouth open like a goldfish, blinking his eyes in amazement. McCain has abandoned 99 percent of the Republican talking points on economics. He never mentions the trickle-down theory. He doesn’t talk about deregulation. He certainly doesn’t talk about small government or fiscal prudence or getting rid of Social Security or privatizing every function of government that doesn’t include his current job. But he does talk about how important it is to give $600 billion to Wall Street or another $300 billion to buy up every bad mortgage in America. He’s like a Bizarro-world version of Reagan -- any minute, you expect him to reinstate the air traffic controllers.
But there is one talking point McCain loves: taking imaginary money away from Joe the Imaginary Plumber.
Again, it’s like a Bizarro-world version of reality. McCain’s party has bankrupted the country and presided over the greatest transfer of wealth since the Gilded Age -- due to Bush’s tax cuts, 20 percent of the money in the country is now in the hands of 1 percent of the people -- and all McCain can do is call for more tax cuts on the rich.
It’s an economic version of Bush’s response to Katrina: Spend trillions more dollars and don’t pay for it! Don’t look out the window of the plane! I say we change the name of the GOP to the FLP -- the Free Lunch Party.
As Politico reminded us this week, the geniuses in financial analysis still say that "the stock market likes Republicans more than Democrats." Why? Because "the key issue on Wall Street minds is…" Can you guess? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not the economic meltdown, not the millions of foreclosed homes, not the fact that without a middle class their corporations might cease to exist. Try corporate taxes.
All this as McCain’s closing-week stump speech on the economy proclaims that "this election comes down to how you want your hard-earned money spent." Sigh.
2.5. Sarah Palin and, Oh, Just the End of the World as We Know It
Okay, there is one more fundamental reason not to vote for McCain. Nobody put it better than Charles Fried, the McCain advisor who just endorsed Obama. Here’s the bomb -- involving more Reagan, financial meltdown and, yes, the contender with the $150,000 wardrobe -- that Fried dropped on The New Republic’s doorstep last week.
From the Mailbag
Lately I feel like this country is back in the O.J. moment, drawing opposite conclusions from the same evidence. So this e-mail cheered me up: "You’re stupid…PS. My fiancé is canceling his subscription to Esquire! You guys are soooooooo liberal, yuck!"
The good part came after I sent my dear reader some proof (in the form of old Esquire articles) that I believe that Charlton Heston was an American patriot and that the Bush administration drifted into torture in a sincere attempt to protect the country.
"Thanks for responding," she answered. "Maybe I was being harsh, I apologize. Fair enough!"
Thanks for writing, Cathy! That’s the spirit that might just save America -- with a little help from President Obama…
Also, last week I misspelled Richard Hayes Phillips's name. Sorry about that.
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