John McCain Is Fighting Back Once Again in the Presidential Race
When Sen. John McCain wrapped up his historic comeback from a flat broke also-ran to presumptive Republican nominee, conservatives openly fretted about how the Arizona senator would persuade the party base to vote for a man many didn't trust.
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It didn't matter that McCain had a solid lifetime conservative rating from right-leaning groups that tracked votes during his four years as a congressman and two-plus decades in the Senate. This was a guy, after all, who joined Democrats to push campaign finance and immigration reforms and, though he has since reversed himself, once bucked President Bush on tax cuts and torture. And McCain helped broker a bipartisan deal that prevented Senate filibusters of Bush's Supreme Court nominees, though he also blocked a conservative scheme to enshrine the ban in the Constitution.
Heroic narrative. But back in February, when McCain had finished off his primary challengers, GOP strategist Ed Rogers had a ready answer for skeptics. "Here's how he wins," Rogers said, producing a copy of Chapter 9 of The Nightingale's Song, the 1996 book by journalist and Vietnam War veteran Robert Timberg, who chronicled the lives of five Naval Academy graduates, including McCain. The chapter tells of McCain's refusal to accept early release from a North Vietnamese POW camp, an offer made because his father (who, like his grandfather, became a four-star admiral) was then commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific.
The book helped consecrate what became McCain's national persona and mythic campaign narrative: a badly wounded young Navy pilot's survival and self-described 5½-year prison transformation from a selfish, temper-plagued rogue who graduated at the bottom of his Naval Academy class to a man ready to serve his country. McCain, who, at 72, would become the nation's oldest first-term president, burnished that persona in his own book, Faith of My Fathers, published during his failed 2000 presidential run.
But the McCain brand in recent weeks has taken a beating. In reaching out to that still-restive conservative base, McCain, a gambler partial to craps, in late August put his own history on the line. A survivor of several bouts of dangerous skin cancer, he picked an untested and, critics say, largely unqualified running mate in Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whom he barely knew. And he launched a negative campaign against Democratic Sen. Barack Obama that has unleashed outbursts of nativism and racism at his rallies that have appeared at times to even startle the nominee. The Palin gambit initially worked in hard-fought states like Florida. "When he named her and settled on the theme that they would be the ticket for change, he really altered the campaign's dynamic and momentum here," says Aubrey Jewett, a University of Central Florida political science professor. "But days later, the economic crisis overshadowed everything."
Even some of McCain's most ardent supporters say they have been stunned by the campaign's singular, provocative focus on painting Obama as "dangerous" and a "pal" of terrorists because he served on an education reform board in the 1990s with 1960s-era antiwar extremist William Ayers, now an education professor in Chicago. "The campaign is heavy into character assassination," says a longtime McCain admirer who, like many, believed that McCain, with his maverick flashes and his appeal to independents, was the only Republican who could win this year after two terms of an unpopular GOP president. "I don't know what the hell is going on."
Polls have shown that McCain's venture, designed by Karl Rove acolyte Steve Schmidt, has hurt him and could permanently tarnish his singular brand. McCain "has made a deal with the devil," says presidential historian David Nichols. "I didn't think I'd ever see John McCain run a campaign this way." Few did. McCain himself denounced negative campaigning in 2000 on his way to losing the South Carolina primary to Bush after being victimized by nasty, anonymous smears—including claims that he fathered an out-of-wedlock black child (among his seven children, he and his second wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter from Bangladesh).
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Reader Comments
MKP of CT-you are misinformed
I truly believe that the buck will stop with OBAMA. He is thrilled and humbled by all of the trust Americans are putting in him and he will NOT let us down and make this about business as usual! There will be real change and I for one have been ready for the last 8 years as has the rest of the world.
Jordan Fan is a bigot
It is people like you who hold back the progress of this nation. We can be great if we elect educated people rather than red necks like you. You can't even string together a coherent sentence. You are a moron!
John McCain and propaganda campaign Ads
John McCain and propaganda campaign Ads
McCain's Ad:
Voice states: "Who is Barack Obama? He says our troops in Afghanistan are...
Obamas voice: "...just air-raiding villages and killing civilians..."
What Obama actually said: "More troops are needed in Afghanistan." "We've got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there."
Voice states: How dishonorable. Congressional liberals voted repeatly to cut off funding to our troops, increasing the risk on their lives...
The fact is Obama voted in 2007 against a measure to put $94 billion into the Iraq War, because there was no timetable of troop withdrawals in the proposal. Obama supports our military. He wants the troops to come home from Iraq. Obama agrees with McCain to funding the military.
McCain voted against funding the troops in Iraq because a different proposal contained a timetable of withdrawal of troops in Iraq. McCain said in the first debate that Iraq is "the hundred year war".
The Iraqi government and the US government have been in negotiations about the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. The current pact states the US troops will leave Iraqi cities by the end of June 2009 with complete US troop withdrawals by December 31, 2011. Unless the Iraqi government requests the troops stay longer.
The pressure is on to have the pact agreement signed before the United Nations mandate expires on December 31, 2008, which would provide no legal basis for US military to be in Iraq. There are currently no negotiations with the United Nations to renew the mandate. Even if there were the mandate could be refused or not approved.
The current Prime Minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki and the ruling Shiite coalition have not come to any agreement. The United Iraqi Alliance want unspecified changes made to the pact before agreeing to it. The streets of Baghdad have been filled with protests of tens of thousands of mainly Shiites against any pact agreement. The Shiite Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers are against the signing of the pact as in its current form. Even Sunni lawmakers are against the current pact.
Besides the agreeing and signing a pact between the US government and the Iraqi government which is creating division and greater distrust of the US military in Iraq. The upcoming elections in January are creating division between Shiite tribes. This could be a major setback in any agreement signing before the end of the year. Since there are at least 200 different Shiite tribes a new internal battle for power and new riots and violence could be yet to come.
How is the US going to settle disputes between so many different tribal parties without a new religious war breaking out within Iraq? Government in Iraq is not based on political freedom but on religious beliefs.
The US needs to agree to having US troops leave a lot sooner, a whole lot sooner before it will be the Iraqi against the US.
Especially now after the Syrian people were attacked by US military. The US had no right to attack Syria. This was very wrong. This was an unprovoked attack on Syria by the US military in Iraq. The US military helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction, killing at least 8 people.
The US military needs to come home from Iraq as soon as possible.
Over 4,000 US troops have died and even more wounded. It is time to end this occupation.
Iraqi Freedom began March 19, 2003 with the invasion of Iraq. President Bush gave a Victory Speech on May 1, 2003. The objective was met. Now for over five and a half years the US military are trying to create a government, be law enforcement and maintain control over the country of Iraq. The US military are for the defense and protection of the US. The troops need to come home.
How many innocent Iraqi people have died from Iraqi Freedom? During the US occupation 88,656 to 96,766 are an estimate. During Saddam regime ethnic cleansing of 300,000 plus persons mostly Shiite and Kurdish people. These numbers are of human lives. People, not things. This has to stop now.
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