May 13, 2008
A little lesbian humor…
Posted by: Chris
… from Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who's regularly named as a possible runningmate for John McCain:
"I have a wife who genuinely loves to fish. I mean, she will take the lead and ask me to go out fishing, and joyfully comes here," the governor said before adding, "She loves football, she'll go to hockey games and, I jokingly say, 'Now, if I could only get her to have sex with me.'"
The governor quickly clarified, "It's a joke, it's a joke."
Nothing particularly racy there, but it's unlikely that social conservatives, already cool to McCain, will find it very funny.
April 10, 2008
A DSM-IV for McCain Mania?
Posted by: Andoni
Listening carefully to John McCain state his
position on the Iraq War over the past few months, I have have concluded there is a huge problem here that the MSM is missing.
McCain repeatedly asserts that if he is president, America cannot and will not lose in Iraq under any circumstances -- even if we have to stay there 100 years or more. When I listen to McCain talk about the "winning the war," I wonder exactly which war McCain has in his head –- Iraq or Vietnam?
It may well be that McCain has never gotten over what happened to the U.S. (and him personally) in the Vietnam War and is transferring his feelings to Iraq. In McCain’s mind, Iraq represents Vietnam. And McCain’s positions on Iraq are simply the emotional manifestations of his trying to achieve closure (and victory) in Vietnam.
This
is something that has no doubt eaten away at him for over 35 years. Now he's stuck living in the past and his intransigent view about Iraq is actually an attempt to
change the result in Vietnam -- at least in his head.
If it sounds familiar to have a president using a new conflict to re-fight a previous war, trying to change the outcome, it is.
President George W. Bush believed his father President George H.W. Bush blew it by not going all the way to Baghdad and finishing off Saddam during the first Gulf War. With that gnawing at him for years, W’s emotions were primed for the 2003 invasion.
Similarly, there was a young German corporal who in 1919 could not accept the outcome of World War I for his country, and so over 20 years set himself up to lead his country to avenge that loss, trying to achieve a different outcome. The result -- Nazi Germany and World War II -- was disastrous.
The DSM-IV stands for the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders, 4th edition. That is the psychiatric medical
text that began listing homosexuality as a mental illness in 1952 in its first
edition. Homosexuality was removed as an illness in 1973 for the fourth
edition.
In light of my observations about Hitler, Bush and McCain, I am going to write to the American Psychiatric Association to suggest they add a new category “Paleo Guerre Disorder” (PGD): whereby a person is so distraught over the result of a previous conflict that he confuses the events and emotions of the old conflict with the current situation.
If America is stupid enough not to see that McCain is trying to undo and avenge the result in Vietnam, then it gets what it deserves if it elects him. Getting fooled twice by a president with the same emotional mental disorder, would be quite stupid on our part, devastatingly stupid.
April 03, 2008
John McCain, the dancing queen?
Posted by: Chris
Maybe there's hope yet for the GOP's crochety presidential nominee John McCain. When he appears on stage, his campaign has taken to blaring the usual patriotic fare -- "God Bless America" and John Phillip Sousa. When they venture into the last few decades, it's the "Top Gun" theme and Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone."
McCain, on the other hand, if he had his druthers, would take a chance on different tune-age:
"I wish they'd play ABBA," he said.
March 28, 2008
Poor Martha Wash
Posted by: Chris
Her booming voice gave us some of the greatest classics of the disco era and the early '80s. She even gave Marky Mark his "Good Vibrations":
How did we return the favor? First she got Milli Vanilli'd in videos by C&C Music Factory and Black Box, with her vocals lip synched by a model:
And now this:
Oh the indignity of it all!
March 25, 2008
McCain's hateful and intolerant pastor
Posted by: Chris
Kudos to MSNBC's Dan Abrams for calling out "Teflon John" even as the MSM otherwise obsesses over Wright:
On the one hand, John Hagee was not McCain's pastor for 20 years. On the other hand, there's every indication that his "controversial" utterances about Catholics and gays were, in fact, indicative of the hateful bile he has preached for years.
March 23, 2008
Where's the 'sharp contrast'?
Posted by: Chris
The headline this Easter Sunday in the non-denominational Christian Today reads, "McCain's pastor a sharp contrast to Obama's," but that conclusion doesn't bear up to scrutiny:
John McCain's Phoenix pastor, Dan Yeary, is a folksy patriotic Southern Baptist who opposes abortion and believes homosexuality to be a biblical sin, but says Christians have an obligation to love such sinners.
That puts Yeary, who heads the church attended for the past 15 years by the US Republican presidential candidate firmly in the US Southern Baptist mainstream, and in line with the Republican Party.
He offers a sharp contrast to Democratic contender Barack Obama's former preacher Jeremiah Wright, who has stirred controversy with his fiery comments on race and America.
The comparison is false on its face. Yeary may well be within the mainstream of Southern Baptists but Wright is similarly within the mainstream of the black church, however incendiary the snippets from his sermons may have been to white Americans.
I also fail to see any contrast in the suggestion that Wright is divisive but Yeary somehow is not. Yeary opposes abortion rights, guaranteed by the U.S. Supreme Court for 35 years, and advocates second-class treatment of gays. What's worse, there is every indication that McCain agrees with his pastor on those points, in the religious and political sense, making his pastor's views much more clearly fair game for discussion.
For example:
The 69-year-old Yeary adheres to the Southern Baptist belief that gay marriage and homosexual relations go against Biblical scripture, hot-button issues for many in the United States.
"The Bible is pretty clear about it, in my opinion it specifically calls it a sin. I also am a sinner and you are a sinner. ... Did Jesus Christ love homosexuals? I'm sure he did," Yeary said.
This sounds remarkably light John McCain's fervent opposition to absolutely any form of legal recognition for gay relationships -- not just marriage or civil unions but even limited domestic partnerships.
There's no indication, on the other hand, that Obama has taken any political cues from Wright's divisive views. To the contrary, Obama has insisted Wright is purely a spiritual mentor and has rejected, denounced and otherwise distanced himself from the controversial political views Wright has aired from the pulpit.
If anything, we should be hearing less about Wright and more about McCain's pastor, and his other religious supporters like Pastor John Hagee, who famously claimed that Hurricane Katrina was intended by God to wipe out the gay Southern Decadence party set for that weekend.
March 22, 2008
The gay case for McCain
Posted by: Chris
Jamie Kirchick of The New Republic is making the case that John McCain wouldn't be "so bad" for gay voters, no matter who the Democrats nominate. I've known and respected Jamie for years and published his columns in the Blade when he was still a student at Yale, but he's trying way too hard here.
Much of what he argues will sound familiar to those who remember the Log Cabin Republicans' spirited defense of the Arizona senator, especially his "courageous" opposition to a federal marriage amendment, Let's remember that McCain attacked the measure as "un-Republican" because it violated states' rights -- a principle with a dubious civil rights history -- and not because it wrote intolerance into the U.S. Constitution.
Jamie tries papering over McCain's unprincipled flip-flop on Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance" who had no place in the GOP. "Sure, McCain spoke at Falwell's Liberty University in 2006," he writes, "but he didn't pander." Oh really? Well it was certainly no random graduation appearance:
McCain's appearance came eight months after the founder of the Moral Majority visited him at his Senate office in what both men said was an effort to put their contentious past behind them. This weekend, Falwell rolled out the red carpet for his old adversary, assembling about 150 church leaders from around the country for a Friday night reception and later hosting a small, private dinner for the senator.
This was purely politics, breaking bread with the conservative leader he once called "evil." Asked on "Meet The Press" last year whether he still believed Falwell was an "agent of intolerance," McCain said: "No, I don’t. I think that Jerry Falwell can explain to you his views on this program when you have him on."
Jamie imagines that McCain's supposed hostility toward the religious right -- certainly kept well-disguised in recent years -- means he won't "feel the need to appease the anti-gay wing of his party." And yet there he was in 2006, endorsing Arizona's draconian anti-gay ballot measure, which not only banned gay marriage but also civil unions and limited domestic partnerships.
Kirchick tries to excuse McCain's support for the Arizona measure -- historic for being the only gay marriage initiative rejected by voters -- by reminding us that John Kerry had also backed state amendments banning gay marriage. Then again, Kerry was one of a handful of senators to vote against the Defense of Marriage Act, supported civil unions including federal recognition, not to mention ENDA, hate crimes and repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell." And last I checked, Kerry was the Democrats' nominee in 2004, not 2008, and both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are on record opposing even limited state marriage amendments, much less Arizona's bigoted overreach.
Kirchick cites several examples of McCain's personal comfort around gay people, and no doubt that's correct. But we've been here before, haven't we? Those who knew George W. Bush were universal in praising his comfort with gay people, in and out of politics, and yet look where it got us. Since when is the absence of personal discomfort in the presence of homosexuals somehow a qualification for the presidency?
Whatever gay Republicans and libertarians may think of McCain's views outside the realm of civil rights, the unmistakable reality is this: McCain's hostility to absolutely any form of legal protection whatsoever for gay relationships is consistent with his opposition to absolutely any form of protection for gays individually. That includes workplace protection, service in the military and even hate crime laws.
McCain's gay allies may be relieved that Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee didn't win the GOP nomination, but McCain's political record remains one of ardent gay rights opposition -- worse even that George W. Bush when he ran in 2000. This is progress?
(Photo of McCain and Falwell via New York Times)
March 19, 2008
What if Obama said this…?
Posted by: Andoni
Well, it’s common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.
-- Senator John McCain, speaking in Jordan (March 19, 2008)
Can you imagine the reaction from the media and critics if Barack Obama had similarly misstated and misunderstood the difference between Sunni and Shia in Iraq, and confused which side Al Qaeda was on? He would have been ridiculed and labeled unfit to be commander in chief. There may well have been calls for him to leave the race because of his ignorance of foreign affairs.
Yet this is exactly the error that on at least four occasions Sen. John McCain made on his trip to the Middle East. After repeating his error for the third time, McCain was saved by a tap on the shoulder by Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who whispered that he had the wrong players on the wrong sides.
What is going with the double standard here?
Hillary Clinton complains about a media double standard that is tougher on her, but what if she had won 12 straight primary victories after Super Tuesday, as Obama did? Again, there would have been an outcry for Obama to drop out. No such reaction when it was Obama winning a dozen in a row.
Is Obama being held to a higher standard than the others because he's black? Because he's young? Because he's new?
Reversing the players is an effective way of determining whether treatment of a candidate is fair or not and imagine the reaction. It's clear to me the standards are unfair here, and Obama is getting a raw deal.
March 14, 2008
Who'll be the next Spitzer?
Posted by: Andoni
By now everyone is familiar with the fact that New York Gov. Eliot "get tough on
prostitution rings" Spitzer was actually patronizing one himself. We remember Ted Haggard railing against homosexuality and
homosexual acts, only to discover that he himself was hiring homosexual
prostitutes and engaging in homosexual acts on the side.
Today we learn in the New York Times that one of Chinaâs leading anti-drinking crusaders, Guo Shizhong, mayor of Xinyang, died -- you guessed it -- in a bar drinking alcohol. Yesterday Chris noted that Oklahoma state senator Sally Kern, with all her anti-gay ranting, may have a gay son.
What's going on with these public figures who go on crusades against what they consider evils or inappropriate conduct in others when they themselves are participating in the same conduct? Freud called this type of behavior "reaction formation." It's a defense mechanism caused by inner anxiety from doing something we think or have been taught is wrong, which is then balanced or defeated by lashing out externally at the very thing that is causing discomfort.
We can each point to countless past examples of this phenomenon at work. But what about those currently in the limelight, but whose hypocrisy remains hidden? Is anyone who goes out of his way to condemn conduct in others justifiably suspect for that very activity? It's a fair bet for a good percentage of these crusaders.
Consider the three finalists in the presidential race: John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. What do these people crusade about most often -- and does that hint about what they may be compensating for internally?
For McCain, the first thing that comes to mind is
his very aggressive opposition to lobbyists and special interests. And yet his
campaign is being run by lobbyists. Is his strong stance against lobbyists a
reaction formation to his heavy reliance on them? Could he be
in bed with them more than we know?
Senator Clinton never forgets to tell us she has 35 years of experience and will be ready to make those tough decisions on Day One, lashing out at Obama for not being ready . Could it be that she is really covering for her own insecurity about lacking much firsthand experience. Is she compensating for this internal unease?
I'm not sure I can think of any examples of where Senator Obama goes overboard crusading for something. I need your help on that one. Any suggestions?
March 08, 2008
John McCain's closet case
Posted by: Chris
I was hopeful in a syndicated column a couple of weeks ago that the replacement of George Bush and Karl Rove at the GOP helm by John McCain might result in a general election with fewer electoral scapegoats, with immigrants neutralized as an issue and gays less likely to be used as a wedge issue. I'm still cautiously optimistic, though McCain has been less than forceful in distancing himself from the outrageous rhetoric of some of his prominent supporters.
Some news today tempered my optimism even more. It appears that Rove and his longtime No. 2, Bush-Cheney '04 campaign manager Ken Mehlman, have now begun advising the McCain campaign in an unofficial capacity.
Mehlman, who has been coy to the point of refusing to respond to rumors that he is gay, was along with Rove the leading architects of the cynical wedge strategy that used state ballot initiatives banning gay marriage to bring social conservatives out to vote in November 2004.
Those of you who were regular readers of the Washington Blade when I was editor know that Ken and I were law school classmates (at the same time Obama himself was studying there), and Ken and I went on to co-found with a larger group an organization of young Republicans called Square One.
Despite a lot of unfounded speculation to the contrary, I have no direct knowledge about whether Ken is gay, and we lost touch years ago, around the same time I came out as a young lawyer working in a D.C. law firm. But I did watch with dismay the strategy employed by the Bush camp, apparently at Rove and Mehlman's direction, that played to bigotry and sacrificed the civil rights of gay Americans as a cheap ploy for votes in Ohio and a few other key electoral states.
I've seen no evidence that either Rove or Mehlman has undergone a Lee Atwater conversion or even mellowed out much. So seeing them with John McCain's ear does not bode well for the general election that awaits. Especially considering that McCain already has on board Bush's 04 media strategist Mark McKinnon, and Steve Schmidt, Bush's "attack dog" in that election.
March 04, 2008
McCain as 'slick Willie'
Posted by: Andoni
“I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade.”
John McCain, 1999“I do not support Roe v. Wade; it should be overturned.”
John McCain, 2008
Over the past two weeks, I’ve done a series of posts pointing out the many inconsistencies of Senator McCain, not over his entire career, but simply over the past 9 years, the time period during which he has been running for president.
Yesterday’s New York Times has an analysis of some of McCain’s inconsistencies during his Senate career, including two major items that I missed. The Times points out that McCain switched his position on abortion (Roe v. Wade) and on Donald Rumsfield as Secretary of Defense.
Over the course of my posts (here and here), I have pointed out McCain’s U-turns, retreats, or flipped positions on torture, immigration, tax cuts, campaign finance reform, divisive politics (Jerry Falwell), the Iraq War, gay marriage and the Confederate flag.
This is a long list, involving substantial policy issues. So many changes over so short a time demonstrates that this guy does not show the character, leadership, resolve or straight-talk that his campaign is built upon.
What so many zig zags show is that McCain has an aptitude for political dishonesty equal to or greater than "slick Willie" or even Mitt-flop Romney. If America decides to turn to a politician as slippery on the issues as Bill Clinton (and one who adamantly supports the Iraq War), then we ruly have learned nothing over the past 15 years.
March 01, 2008
McCain's "double-talk" express (II)
Posted by: Andoni
Last week, I called into question Senator John McCain’s reputation as a straight talker and suggested that he had now officially qualified as a flip-flopper. Among the issues I cited as his retreats were torture, immigration, tax cuts, campaign finance reform, and Jerry Falwell.
Now a YouTube video actually nails that case even further, adding how how McCain also U-turned on his optimistic claims about the Iraq War as well as his initial support (all 11 minutes of it) of gay marriage:
On the Iraq War, McCain is quoted a half dozen times saying it’s going to be easy … easy … easy … easy.
When it became obvious that the war wasn’t going to be as easy as he said it would be, McCain started criticizing those he claimed had misled Americans into thinking it was going to be easy (somehow obliterating his memory that he was one of those people):
The American people were led to believe that this would be some kind of day at the beach, which many of us fully understood from the beginning would be a very very difficult undertaking.
The YouTube video is a sad statement about McCain and shows how bad he can be made to look when someone pastes all his statements together back to back.
An aggressive opponent in the general election will be able to strip away the McCain myth of “straight talker” and label him as someone who has a record of being wrong on so many important issues and lacking the backbone to stick to those positions on which he was actually right.
February 29, 2008
McCain's politics of rejection
Posted by: Chris
Yesterday in my post about the slippery slope between Louis Farrakhan and Donnie McClurkin, I noted that John McCain appeared on stage this week to accept the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee of the Christian Zionist Movement, who has said very incendiary things about Catholics and Jews and apparently blamed Hurricane Katrina on the gays. Today McCain neither "denounced" nor "rejected" Hagee's endorsement or views, but he did distance himself.
And in finding common ground with Catholics, he managed to take a swipe at the gays:
Yesterday, Pastor John Hagee endorsed my candidacy for president in San Antonio, Texas. However, in no way did I intend for his endorsement to suggest that I in turn agree with all of Pastor Hagee's views, which I obviously do not.
I am hopeful that Catholics, Protestants and all people of faith who share my vision for the future of America will respond to our message of defending innocent life, traditional marriage, and compassion for the most vulnerable in our society.
McCain is hardly sounding like the champion in the fight against a federal marriage amendment that the Log Cabin folks still imagine him to me.
February 24, 2008
Log Cabin's main man McCain
Posted by: Chris
The good folks over at Log Cabin -- Scott Tucker in particular -- have taken the time to respond to a column I wrote last week that casts doubt on whether gay Republicans should be so happy with John McCain as their party's nominee. While Tucker acknowledges that I'm "a generally reasonable voice" (and thanks for that), he feels I "missed the boat" with this column and headlined his response, "And the Delusion Begins…" (Ahem!)
Tucker makes a stronger case than I did for McCain as a independent-thinking moderate, arguing that more so than past nominees, McCain succeeded without any support from the social conservatives and the "religious right." He also points out that the Arizona senator did not simply vote against the federal marriage amendment, "McCain gave the most impassioned speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate against the amendment, calling it 'antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans.'"
Both points are well taken, although McCain's lack of evangelical backing was not for lack of trying. He went out of his way to recant his previous criticism of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance" and even gave the commencement address at Falwell's Liberty University, which expels openly gay students. Tucker dismisses McCain's Falwell flip-flop by misstating my point:
Okay, so, if I’m hearing you correctly, it’s a deal-breaker for a politician to appear with those who preach intolerance of gays? Guess you won’t be voting for Barack Obama then.
Note that the Obama reference is linked to an item about the Donnie McClurkin controversy. In fact, my point was that McCain took back his criticism of Falwell for no reason other than to mollify evangelical Christians. Of course McCain's unconditional embrace of Falwell was very different from how Obama dealt with McClurkin, the "ex-gay" gospel singer.
Obama said that while he accepted McClurkin's support, he disagreed fundamentally with McClurkin on gay rights. Obama has also repeatedly said to black ministers that the black church needs to own up to its homophobia. Suffice it to say that McCain's Liberty commencement included no such challenges.
More tortured was Tucker's logic in defense of Log Cabin's attack ads against Mitt Romney, who was (for a Republican) supportive of gay rights but reversed himself almost completely in his presidential run. Here's what I wrote:
“Governor Romney [spent] tens of millions of dollars to hide his record and to distort the record of his opponents,” the gay GOP group said in a statement [after Romney quit the race]. “In the end, voters did not find this version of Mitt Romney to be credible. Too many voters learned the truth about his record, and that record didn’t match his new found conservative rhetoric.” …
[I]s it really the Log Cabin view that Romney’s pro-gay past is inconsistent with being a true conservative, and his anti-gay presidential campaign reflects “newfound conservative rhetoric”?
In response, Tucker said this:
No. That’s why the ads we launched highlighting Romney’s record made no mention of gay issues. It is our view that the Romney who once ran from the Reagan legacy like it was a smelly gym sock, only to brand himself a “Reagan conservative” in a later White House run, is not consistent and not conservative. Ditto his flips on taxes, guns, abortion, and just about every other major issue.
It's a very strained position that Log Cabin is taking. So Romney reinvented himself on a whole range of issues to appear more conservative to GOP primary voters, but his 180-degree flip-flop on gay rights wasn't yet another example of taking a newfound conservative position? C'mon -- of course it was, and by pointing out all the other ways in which Romney tacked to the right, Log Cabin only reinforced that support for gay rights is not conservative and opposing gay rights is conservative.
Log Cabin would have been far more effective attacking Romney's credibility, including on gay issues, rather than reinforcing notions about what "qualifies" someone as being conservative.
Most disappointingly, Tucker makes no effort to address the real criticism of my column: that with public support so overwhelming (including among Republicans) on a whole range of gay rights issues, LCR should expect more than opposition to every form of gay rights, including workplace protection, hate crime laws, repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," civil unions or domestic partnerships.
McCain is on the wrong side of every one of those issues. Is that really worth cheering about?
A closeted veep for McCain?
Posted by: Chris
With John McCain pretty much wrapping up to GOP nomination, speculation moves to whom he might select as his running mate. This from yesterday's New York Times:
Quite a few of the names being bandied about are those of politicians in their 40s and 50s, including Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, 47; Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, 51, whose well-timed endorsement helped Mr. McCain win the crucial swing-state’s primary; Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, 47; and Rob Portman, 52, a former Ohio congressman and director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Well you can strike one name off that list: Charlie Crist. The briefly-married, longtime bachelor governor of Florida has too many lingering questions about whether he's gay -- from a fellow politician's recollection of a personal admission from Crist years earlier, to (unproven) stories about a young male activist being seduced at a party.
Expect McCain to stay as far away as possible from that kind of sideshow.
February 23, 2008
Is McCain pulling a 'Clinton?' (II)
Posted by: Andoni
The first crack has appeared in John McCain's defense against the New York Times article. The Daily Kos' Barbin MD found a deposition by McCain that appears to contradict statements made by the presumptive GOP nominee at the press conference yesterday. In particular, McCain insisted that the letter he wrote on behalf of the lobbying firms Paxson and Alcalde &Fay about preserving a broadcast ownership loophole was a routine constituent matter and that he had never spoken with them about it.
But in a deposition under oath on September 25, 2005, Senator McCain when asked how he got information on the matter said, "But I would add, I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue."
Today in a more complete account of this incident, the New York Times reports that the letters that McCain wrote were unusually blunt and were sent after meetings he had with lobbyist Vicki Iseman and Edwin Edwards, the president of the company that wanted to keep the loophole.
The money line from the Times article:
Edwin Edwards, who was the president of the company at the time, said in a recent interview that after retaining Ms. Iseman, he was able to get heard by Mr. McCain.
Does this prove anything? Probably not on its own. But for a senator who campaigns on cleaning up Washington from the influence of lobbyists, this is not a good Exhibit A. And I'm sure there are more to follow.
Drip, drip, drip.
February 22, 2008
Is McCain pulling a 'Clinton'?
Posted by: Andoni
We all remember Bill Clinton's famous, "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."
Could John McCain be playing the same kind of semantics game? The New York Times and the Washington Post are great newspapers whose editors and reporters know the importance of getting a story correct. They know their obligation to the public and to their readers; and they both have set up strict rules of scrutiny so the public can have faith that what they publish is basically true.
Is it possible that both these great newspapers are totally incorrect in their reports on McCain's improprieties or appearances of improprieties during his 2000 campaign? The chances are slim that not one sliver of what the Times or Post reported is true. And yet McCain's denials at his press conference yesterday were unequivocal. So what else could be going on here?
In their reporting, the Times said that its sources were "associates" of McCain and the Post claimed its information was from McCain "advisers." However, during Senator McCain's press conference yesterday, the terms used for the denials that anyone ever attempted an intervention in his relationship with Vicki Iseman were "aides" and "staff," not "associates" and "advisers" as described in the two papers.
Marc Ambinder conjectures that these "associates" and "advisers" acting to separate McCain from Iseman might have been friends or even other lobbyists, and not "aides" and "staff." If this is so, then McCain is playing word games just as Clinton did, and the electorate will not appreciate it. It will be interesting to see how the same Republicans who took Clinton to task for playing with the truty will react if this turns out to be the case with McCain as well.
Who do I believe here? The Times, for two reasons. First ,it has a track record of good journalism. Second, there is enough history of McCain being in bed (figuratively) with lobbyists even as he has tried to build a reputation opposite of that.
Today's Washington Post exposes McCain's hypocrisy with respect to lobbyists by pointing out:
[W]hen McCain huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona cabin last weekend to map out his presidential campaign, virtually every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long decried.
This cartoon by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Mike Luckovich captures problems McCain is going to have when his real record with lobbyists becomes better known. McCain's reputation as squeaky clean is all P.R. and will go the same route that Hillary's all-P.R. "inevitability."
This McCain story is still unresolved, and I really hope more comes out from either the Times or Post to prove or disprove things. McCain's denials were so unequivocal that it will take only one small piece of the Times story to be proven true to derail his campaign. If he's caught in a lie -- even a Clinton lie -- he's done.
February 20, 2008
The ethics reformer has an ethics problem
Posted by: Andoni
The New York Times broke a story this evening that calls into question John McCain's ethics:
[T]o his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.
Is there anything to this? By itself, the story raises a lot of questions that may or may not matter. However, I see a pattern of problems for McCain. The other day, I asked if McCain had already qualified as a flip-flopper, and cited five examples of McCain hypocrisy or position reversals.
This was the sentence that popped my eyes out most from this Times story about the Arizona senator's "close relationship" with a female lobbyist was:
Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself.
This was eerily reminiscent for me of the type of language that we heard from President Bill Clinton's staff in reference to Monica Lewinsky and various other "bimbo eruptions."
For a candidate of reform trying to portray himself as having ethics above reproach, this and the five examples I cited in my previous post, can be a very big problem.
February 19, 2008
Has McCain qualified as a flip-flopper?
Posted by: Andoni
Has John McCain reversed himself yet on enough of his "principled" long-standing positions to be considered a flip-flopper? Let's examine the record.
1. Most recently, McCain made a U-turn on one of his fundamental issues, that the United States should not torture prisoners. As a prisoner of war himself for more than five years during the Vietnam War, McCain has the most credibility of any politician on this issue. Last week, when the Senate tried to explicitly codify the prohibition of torture by the U.S. (the U.S. is already a party to the Geneva Conventions which prohibits torture, but somehow the Bush Administration didn't understand this treaty), McCain voted against a bill that would have specifically prohibited the U.S. from using water boarding or other interrogative techniques not allowed under the Army Field Manual. Andrew Sullivan, a McCain supporter said it well when he claimed he was heartbroken over how easily McCain dumped his principles on this important issue.
2. McCain has been a long time champion of immigration reform. In fact he and Senator Kennedy led the fight last year to pass President Bush's comprehensive immigration reform bill. In doing so, he went against a majority of his Republican Party colleagues as well as the GOP base. McCain defended himself by saying immigration reform was one of the principles he believed in very strongly. Now, however, when facing an angry Republican base during the primaries, Media Matters points out that McCain's position has changed so much that he says as president he would not sign the same immigration reform bill he sponsored last year. Media Matters labels this a flip-flop. McCain's talking points have switched from we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform to border security -- building a bigger, longer taller fence. McCain's principles and backbone on immigration seem to have evaporated in the heat of the primary battles and the pressure generated by the Republican base.
3. When President Bush proposed his tax cut packages, Senator McCain made principled arguments that you couldn't cut taxes for the rich or during a war, and he voted against the Bush tax cuts. Now that he is running for president, he has reversed himself on this principled stance by saying he would extend the Bush tax cuts. And this past Sunday on "This Week," McCain officially pledged "no new taxes" as president. The reason McCain gives for this U turn is that we are heading into a recession, and tax cuts will be a good stimulus to help the economy. There is one problem with the contrived reasoning, however. The Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of 2010. It is impossible for anyone to know what the economy will be like at that time, so the arguments that it is necessary to extend the cuts to avoid a recession or that not to extend the cuts will hurt the economy if we are in a recession are bogus. No one knows what 2011 will be like, and permanent tax cuts are not how you generate a stimulus to fight a recession.
4. Senator McCain long ago made himself a reformer when it comes to campaign financing and transparency in the financing of elections. This same senator now, however, refuses to release his own personal tax returns during the primaries. The fact that the Senator had to get personal loans to keep his campaign afloat during the the lean times of the primary season warrants a look at his personal finances to get a better idea of where the money is coming from or going to. It seems like a reasonable thing to expect that a long held position advocating transparency in financing elections should apply today as well as in the past. However, when it comes to his own situation, Senator McCain appears to be using different standards today than those he has long advocated for others in past.
5. Finally, and most distant, but something that should have foreshadowed how elastic Senator McCain's principles could really become ... the Jerry Falwell U turn. When McCain ran for president in 2000, he courageously called Jerry Falwell one of America's "agents of intolerance." But in 2006 when McCain began running for president again, he apologized to Falwell and took it all back by telling Falwell he had "spoken in haste." Then on "Meet the Press" McCain completed his U turn by saying that Falwell is no longer an agent of intolerance.
These five examples qualify McCain as a flip-flopper. The changes were not the result of changing circumstances or deliberate re-examination of principles and positions. They were due solely to personal political expediency.
The flip-flopper accusation was used very effectively by George Bush in 2004 against Democratic nominee John Kerry. Since then, it's been overused and worn out. So what might be a new catchy 2008 term be that applies to Senator McCain?
Maybe the "double talk express," the "U turn express," "forked tongue express," the "about-face express," "the retreater." Any other suggestions?
February 13, 2008
Will he or won't he?
Posted by: Kevin
We are at a stage in the Republican nomination process where symbolism, code language, and posturing matter more than almost anything else. It's a tentative, tension-filled moment where the various constituencies in the GOP begin biting and angling for place and dominance as the ranks begin to consolidate behind a presumptive nominee.
With any run-of-the-mill GOP nominee-in-waiting, there would be a whole lot of calculated hugging, genuflecting, back-slapping in order to "unite the party". It can sometimes lead to craven promises, nearly always to the religious right, which morally stain the Republican Party's march forward in the eyes of the rest of us. The question now remains - with a candidate as unusual as John McCain, who is openly reviled by the core religious right and its fanatical amen-corners on talk radio, and the pressure of an almost suicide-mission campaign from the right by Mike Huckabee in state after state, will John McCain kneel down, too?
It's usually been a kind of an awful display of politics over principle, one which anyone who seeks a power base of any size in the GOP must angle toward participating in. It's often said that Republicans are from Mars, and Democrats are from Venus - and when it comes to inter-party politics, that's definitely the case. The push-pull of this moment in the GOP campaign is classic, and everyone who wants to be a player has to, well, play.
As a GOP organization, Log Cabin Republicans did so in 1996 and 2000 - two election campaigns in which I played a senior staff role. The group made a public decision from the outset in both cases to create leverage by positioning itself from the beginning to have some eventual say at this same tentative moment of "party unity" - not to mention a possible role in an eventual administration.
With Bob Dole in 1996, we were breaking new ground. And it was quite an adventure from start (a returned campaign check and the resulting international media furor) to finish (a request for our endorsement, a convention free of anti-gay rhetoric, a pledge to maintain non-discrimination policies in federal employment).
In 2000, we were courted by the McCain campaign, which had several openly gay Republicans in its leadership doing the wooing along with the candidate himself, and while we took actions to remind Karl Rove that his political dalliances with anti-gay groups who demanded all sorts of promises would not be overlooked by us, and there would be pain inflicted on the Bush campaign if it even whispered anti-gay rhetoric on the stump.
McCain's early trouncing of Bush in some primaries opened up that leverage, and we smacked Bush with negative radio ads ahead of the 2000 Super Tuesday to hit back for his behavior in South Carolina. The result was to force Bush to hold the first-ever meeting with a group of openly-gay Republicans -- albeit ones that Karl Rove chose in order to snub LCR's leadership. But that didn't matter. We got our leverage, and we used it. Other 'firsts' resulted -- the first openly-gay national AIDS director, the first federal prosecution of an anti-gay murder as a hate crime, and the first real global AIDS initiative. Small potatoes for some, sure. But progress for the GOP circa 2001-2002. It was enough to infuriate leading religious right organizations, who in 2001 launched an effort to "expose" the "gay Republican agenda" at work inside the Bush White House (and I was named personally as a conspirator in some reports).
The point of recalling all this is not to extol the virtues of Bob Dole or George W. Bush by any means; far from it. It's a very different world in 2008, and as it should be, the bar is far higher for both parties than it was then. But it's to point out how leverage is the name of the game in politics, and how power is gained or lost inside the GOP through leverage. And why this is a very tense moment for gay observers of the McCain campaign, because of the leverage trying to be exerted on him now by some of the gay community's biggest enemies in politics. Will he be different? Will he fight off the religious right kitchen-sink that is currently flying at his head?
Chris asked very understandably for someone to explain what the attraction is for John McCain among some gays. It's not easy to explain in sound bites. McCain does represent a milestone in the journey that gays have made with the Republican Party, either on the inside or on the outside. Because he will be the nominee, we will have a presidential contest in which neither candidate supports the Federal Marriage Amendment. True, neither will support gay marriage; indeed both will have been on record opposing it. But we should all agree that this is still progress.
If Hillary Clinton is the nominee, she will carry with her some nice rhetoric and very little substance on gay issues. Obama is a very new product, and the radioactive wattage of his rhetoric is all we really have on him. McCain has a long record, and it contains both legislative and political memories of all types.
He stood with gay Republicans against the ugly tactics in South Carolina in 2000 and the early pandering by the 2000 Bush campaign to anti-gay groups. He voted against the FMA in the Senate, and spoke against it on the Senate floor, but he also voted for DOMA, against ENDA, supports "don't ask, don't tell" and backed the Arizona anti-gay marriage referendum (but so did John Kerry back such a measure in 2004).
He led the fight with Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-OR) in 1996 to repeal the repulsive Dornan Amendment, which sought to create witchhunts to drive soldiers out of the military who tested HIV positive after enlistment and cut off all their benefits. I remember meeting with him that year in the Senate and seeing the blood in his eyes over how unfair it was as he laid out their strategy for getting the votes to repeal it. And when I raised "don't ask, don't tell" in the same conversation, and again when it was raised in our meeting with him as a presidential candidate in 2000, he had the same political (almost Hillaryesque) answer: "When General Colin Powell says it's time to repeal it, we can do it."
Conviction, politics, bravery, skittishness -- all rolled up in one. It was good from a conservative Republican in 1996 and 2000; it's frustrating today coming from anyone wanting to be President, even if it's an improvement over the last guy who ran.
He would certainly appoint openly gay people in a McCain Administration, and probably in some senior positions should the right people come along. I have no doubt about that. And he would get his back up and defend them against even a whisper of anger from the (shrinking) GOP minority in the Congress over their qualifications. But I don't know if he'll ever be with us on ENDA. I'd like to think he will be. But that's not enough for most people to make a decision in November, if that's their big issue.
He'll never be with us on marriage, though. There aren't enough years left in life for that kind of conversion, I'm afraid, as much as I like him personally. At least he'll never lie to us in the face about it, like many Democrats. But how good is that a reason to vote for him? I guess it depends on his opponent, who will also oppose gay marriage. Here's where it gets muddy, yet again.
So, in that melange of answers and ruminations, you see where McCain fits into the bigger picture for some gays. And you also see how tenuous this moment is for those who hope he will continue to be "different", albeit imperfect, in terms of Republican nominees. He already went to Liberty University a long time ago, and much like he did at CPAC last week, he didn't give them anything other than very polite attention and a restatement that he is who he is, take him or leave him.
If McCain faces down the pressure of Huckabee's challenge and the ravings of the talk radio set, and refuses to kneel in any way to that pressure, then we shift our focus to the GOP convention in St. Paul and beyond, and begin to wonder what a Clinton or Obama challenge would bring out in John McCain next fall. And if he wins the presidency, whether we voted for him or not, what will it mean for the Republican Party that a tough man stood up to our community's biggest political enemies, told them to go to hell, won the nomination, led the party to victory and never regretted it for a moment? It could finally embolden gay rights supporters in the GOP to get off their asses, come out of hiding (and the closet) and do the right thing in abundance once and for all.
For many of us who look at the U.S. political spectrum far beyond the meetings of a few gay Democratic clubs in a handful of major cities, it would be a gigantic step forward for the United States. And there would be a duty for Log Cabin Republicans to build leverage over the McCain Administration and to use it for the right ends -- legislative and policy outcomes that we want as a community, and progress that we can measure and hold up to the next president and the next.
If you don't get it, well, sorry. That's just the way it is on Mars.