The Staggering Cynicism Of John McCain
The familiar frat boy smirk was absent when George Bush went before the nation last night to cry wolf.
The man speaking from the White House had recently managed the feat of polling disapproval ratings lower than Richard Nixon during the week before he resigned, while the people objecting most vociferously to the $700 billion taxpayer-funded bailout plan being engineered by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the de facto president of the hour, were conservative Republicans.
Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas set the bar high before the president beseeched Congress to speedily approve the bailout:
“Those of us that have studied the Bible know that the Lord made the world in seven days. We are now being asked to reshape the financial world in less than half that time and without the benefit of divine powers.
“It defies common sense to pass a potential trillion-dollar bailout bill without having a rational and deliberate conversation about other potential alternatives and remedies. I remain skeptical of the Paulson plan and am utterly unconvinced that this is the only alternative.”
The only surprise of the evening was that John McCain didn’t sidle up to the president as he spoke to let us know that he was back in the ‘hood. And even though he hadn’t shown up for a Senate vote since early April, was ready to rumble.
We’ll leave it to the historians to sort out the exact sequence of the extraordinary events in the hours before the president’s prime-time hankie wringing, but the general outline is clear:
Early on a day when national polls showed Barack Obama pulling away from McCain, the Democrat called him and privately suggested that the two issue a joint statement in an effort to keep presidential campaign politics from becoming an impediment to bailout package deliberations. The offer echoed a similar one Obama had made that resulted in the candidates appearing at Ground Zero earlier in the month on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
McCain huddled with his advisers. He finally accepted several hours later, but only after he rejected Obama’s call for the bailout package to include oversight provisions, cap executive salaries and help foreclosed homeowners. His campaign then announced then that, in so many words, it was pulling the rug out from under the entire purpose of the joint statement and injected a huge shot of campaign politics into the deliberations. McCain was suspending campaigning, was rushing back to Washington and would skip the first presidential debate tomorrow night.
As the day went on and McCain preened before the cameras not in Washington but in New York City, with timeouts for Katie Couric and Lady Lynn de Rothschild but not David Letterman, one of the candidate’s leading surrogates added a further wrinkle: That the first presidential debate should supplant the only debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.
It is not known if Palin is suspending campaigning since she wasn’t doing any of substance in the first place.
Presto change-o! In a matter of a few hours, attention had been diverted from the imploding McCain-Palin campaign. In a matter of a few hours, the bailout deliberations had been unnecessarily complicated.
Except that Obama wasn’t buying. And, according to overnight polls, neither are most voters.
Obama cited the gravity of the financial crisis in rejecting McCain’s call to postpone the debate:
“It is my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess. It is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once.”
Ploy. Flailing. Cut and run. Stunt. Bizarre. Choking. Preemptive. Gimmicky. Brilliant. Retreat. Cowardly. Desperate. Surreal. Those are but a few of the words being used to describe McCain, but I think these sum it up best: Staggering cynicism.
From his metamorphosis from Mr. Clean to Mr. Dirty to his selection of Palin, cynicism has been the underlying theme of McCain’s run for the roses. It has inculcated nearly everything he has said and done since he became the last man standing after the Republican primaries, albeit the most elderly and addled.
John McCain is gambling that this is a moment — and it may be his last — to prove that he is presidential. His real intention, of course, is not to help rescue the economy, but his own campaign.
21 Responses to “The Staggering Cynicism Of John McCain”
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The man has totally sold his soul – he has nothing left.
And Bush trumps McCain yet again – Bush's Chicken Little is lead story on all papers and news sites – McCain's pathetic mental suspension gets buried inside.
Shaun,
You can make a good case that McCain is not fit to be President. However, the case that Senator Obama will be some kind of miracle worker is fast falling apart. Senator Obama from his bad choice of Senator Biden to his refusal to talk about future plans has demonstrated that Senator Obama is just another hack politician.
I guess all those years of reporting on politics in a one party town has made you accepting of the incompetence of Democrats much more than Republicans.
At least you could have tried to gain from credibilty and talk about how incompetent Speaker Pelosi has been and the wide gap between what was promised when she was chosen versus the failure that she has presided over.
Could McCain be having a senior moment or is he just too overwhelmed by this crisis to debate, because a President of the United States is always on Call!
Or, is McCain really being dirty and underhanded, trying to pull the wool out from under Barack's feet, when he reached out to him early Wedensday morning in a bi-partisan moment, so together they could show solidarity and release a Joint Statement, however, McCain did not like that idea and decidied to bring politics into an already unsteady situation in an attempt to aid his political career, pretending that it was he who reached out to Barack and not the otherway around! However, that was not good enough, he must one-up him and cancel the campaign all together, the crisis is so great, a sudden change of heart that makes McCain look phony and untrustworthy. That is not putting Country first, but we already know that by his Pallin pick!
And, of course, the debates should not be cancelled. A President has to be able to multi-task, big time! McCain's cancelling looks more like a senior moment or that he is too overwhelmed and distraught to be albe to explain to the country just what he would do to address this problem. Maybe McCain will not be able to answer that 3:00 a.m. phone call as a President is always on call.
McCain the Wizard of Oz now pretends he has a heart, brain and courage! If so, its not working very well. His wall of lies and deceipt are closing in on him and soon there will be no place to hide, not even in the Senate. McCain you can run, you can lie, but you cannot hide and Humpty Dumpty couldnot be put together again!
[...] bleeding heart handwringer kneejerk conspiracy theorizing Kumayahist** at the Moderate Voice, with The Staggering Cyncism of John McCain, whose campaign apparently was imploding before his cynicism went into full lurch: Ploy. Flailing. [...]
can't hit the snooze alarm for those 3 am calls.
SD, maybe you could submit a guest post about Joe Biden, in the meantime you may want to give your favorite rant a break and focus on the subject at hand.
Shaun, you nailed it again. It's hard to see how this could possibly help McCain, he seems to be losing his grip – again. I assume he saw the Katie Couric interview with Sarah Palin; that would have been enough to shake him up.
Most disgusting was that McCain made it back to Wahington just in time for…the photo op with Bush at the White House with the other congress people hammering out the details of the plan. He didn't make it in time for the actual bargaining sessions.
And this race is still in a virtual tie?! Unreal.
Everything's relative. Obama has offered far more detailed plans for the future than McCain. And the plans that McCain has offered are contradictory and unexplained.
Biden, meanwhile, comes across as George Washington compared to Sarah Palin… I can't even think of a good analogy for her? Maybe Carrot Top?
Sarah Palin has not suspended her campaign.
If McCain is so concerned about the situation why did he just speak at Clinton GI? Shouldn't he be huddled in Washington?
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/09/25/politic…
I guess McCain can multitask with the Clinton's but not with Obama.
Chris,
Is Palin was black and saying exactly the same things, the Democrats would love her because she would sound like most members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Remember, CBC is allowed to talk about religion, god, and their personal religious life but not white Democrats.
SD,
Palin isn't allowed to talk. She's read speeches, and painfully recited what talking points she could remember in the two interviews she's done.
SD- Knowing the low esteem in which you hold the CBC, may we infer that your opinion of Palin is as low or lower?
I think SD is “just a dude playin' a dude disguised as another dude.”
What ya mean “you people”.
McCain was gambling that his latest ploy would work and put him in the WH. Just like he gambled that the Palin pick (the pick of an unknown, unvetted religious right fanatic) would work and put him in the WH. And he called the Iraq war a slam dunk, gambling with the lives of this country's soldiers. He gambled with deregulation at teh cost of all of us taxpayers. He wanted to further gamble with our money by privatizing social security. He wants to gamble with our healthcare and deregulate it the way he deregulated the financial markets. I'll stop there…
And yet he wants us to elect him president so he can gamble with his finger on the nuclear button when things get tense with Russia.
Sounds like he has a gambling problem. He needs help and it's not from the people of the US to put him in the world's most powerful office.
[...] the day. This has been termed reckless by many observors, but stunts always are, aren’t they? McCain’s cynicism has been exposed. As it turns out, McCain didn’t get the chance to play the role of the Lone Ranger, not even [...]
“Moderate” voice, you say?
Dirty and underhanded is closer to it. McShame has gambled again, as with his choice of the Wasilla Wacko, and LOST. What increasingly appears to be the case is that McCain is unable and incompetent to answer not only the 3AM call but the 8AM and 10AM ones
Yes, you are right about his VP pick, however, we must now watch how the bail-out works out as McCain is trying to say the tentative deal is due to his input, when we all know this deal has been worked out by those senators and congressman who have worked around the clock for the last 7 days, and they deserve the credit!