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The McCain Makeover

April 1st, 2008
By ROBERT STEIN

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The Righteous Republican cosmeticians have started to work their magic and, as in the women’s magazines, a natural-looking person may end up resembling an aging tart. To borrow from Gloria Steinem, McCain would do better to brush them off and say, “This is what seventy and self-possessed looks like, get used to it.”

The first ad is a tipoff, harking back to those days at the Hanoi Hilton over a quarter of a century ago, echoing his advice to fellow prisoners: “Keep that faith. Keep your courage. Stick together. Stay strong. Do not yield. Stand up. We’re Americans. And we’ll never surrender.”

We’re all prisoners of George W. Bush in Iraq now, and it may not be in McCain’s best interests to remind us that he wants to keep us there, if not for a hundred years, until some of the troops there are his age now.

William Kristol is advising the candidate who admits he doesn’t know much about the economy to offer “a broad reform agenda–education reform, health insurance reform, tax reform, government reform, Wall Street reform. He could start by outlining an up-to-date, capitalism-friendly and transparency-requiring approach to regulating the credit markets.”

Biography isn’t enough, Kristol reminds McCain. You have to start doing a George Bush impersonation, throwing out all kinds of voter bait that you can sweep aside when you get into the White House.

By the time Conservatives finish remaking McCain, his nonagenarian mother won’t recognize him and, if he looks in the mirror, neither will he.

Cross-posted from my blog.



This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 8:32 am and is filed under Torture, Political Philosophy, Vietnam War, Spin, Campaign Ads, Newsweek Blogitics, John McCain, Media, War, 2008 Elections, Iraq, George W. Bush, Republicans, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    Hmmm...actually, when I heard McCain's staccato delivery in the ad, I was reminded not of the Bush era but of a classic speech of American liberalism. Compare the two:

    "Keep that faith. Keep your courage. Stick together. Stay strong. Do not yield. Stand up. We’re Americans. And we’ll never surrender.” -- McCain

    "the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die." -- Ted Kennedy 1980

    Kennedy's is better of course. But the rhetorical pattern is strikingly similar.

    The main difference lies in the militaristic tone of the former, and the social uplift tone of the latter.
 
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