A portrayal of John McCain

Rolling Stone Magazine has published an absolutely fascinating article about the history of John McCain. If you are thinking about voting for John McCain, you must do yourself a service and read this article so that you understand the man you would be voting for. It's the portrait of a bullying man who will do and say anything to be President and promote himself ... even after saying he wouldn't do that. (See the last paragraphs of this blog.)

You can find the article here: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain/

I will warn you in advance that some of the language in the article is salty. Also, the article is very long.

Highlights of the article:

• After ending his time as a POW, he studied at the National War College. As part of that, students get to do academic travels. Instead of choosing something where he might learn something, like the Middle East, he chose Rio de Janeiro. Why? Well, according to him, "I got a better chance of getting laid." Remember that he was married at the time.
  
• I like this quote from the article:
  
  We have now watched McCain run twice for president. The first time he positioned himself as a principled centrist and decried the politics of Karl Rove and the influence of the religious right, imploring voters to judge candidates "by the example we set, by the way we conduct our campaigns, by the way we personally practice politics."
  
  So what do his current campaign practices say about him?
  
• McCain originally voted against Bush's tax cuts. Of course now he wants to extend them.
  
• There are tales of how he used his privileged status as the son of a 4-star general to bully people at school and get himself privileges he did earn or deserve.
  
• He had an incredible temper and drinking problems. He had no problem cursing out women.
  
• From the article:
  
  McCain's self-described "four-year course of insubordination" ended with him graduating fifth from the bottom — 894th out of a class of 899. It was a record of mediocrity he would continue as a pilot.
  
  Yes, we want someone who was insubordinate and did not apply himself to be President.
  
• After crashing a plane during a training flight, McCain took some painkillers and a nap, and then went out carousing that night.
  
• How about this example of recklessness:
  
  Flying over the south of Spain one day, he decided to deviate from his flight plan. Rocketing along mere feet above the ground, his plane sliced through a power line. His self-described "daredevil clowning" plunged much of the area into a blackout.
  
• There's one section of this article that talks about the accident on the USS Forrestal, where 134 of his crewmates were killed after a missile inexplicably fired and hit his plane as he was sitting in it. It wasn't McCain's fault the accident happened by far and he was lucky to escape with his life. But the article gets on him for not doing more to help fight the fire and preventing the ship from sinking. While I guess it's possible that he could have done more, the guy did just escape with his life. He could have been suffering from post-stress disorder or something. He was somewhat wounded. I mean, if he was the only person sitting around while things were happening that was one thing, but the article never says that.
  
  However, what I will get on him for is the fact that he used the accident as a PR opportunity, doing interviews with the New York Times and leaving the ship for what he said was "some welcome R&R" while the rest of his crewmates mourned their dead. That doesn't show much caring or leadership.
  
• The article mentions this about McCain's incarceration as a POW during the Vietnam War:
  
  The Code of Conduct that governed POWs was incredibly rigid; few soldiers lived up to its dictate that they "give no information . . . which might be harmful to my comrades." Under the code, POWs are bound to give only their name, rank, date of birth and service number — and to make no "statements disloyal to my country."
  
  The article talks about that while McCain was a POW he freely gave military information to the Vietnamese. Not while being tortured or under duress. To save his own skin.
  
  He told them he was an Admiral's son because he knew that he would then be more valuable to his captors alive than dead. He also provided the name of his ship, the number of raids he had flown, his squadron number and the target of his final raid. That's courage, alright.
  
  Also, his brave stance not to go home when offered the chance? Apparently if he had accepted it, he would have been court martialed and he knew that. He didn't want to give up his military career and the potential to meet the lofty status of his father.
  
• He cheated on his first wife and met his current wife, having an affair with her, while still married. OH, and also after his poor wife had been disfigured by a car accident while he was a POW.
  
• McCain managed to get a pork-barrel spending project passed to build an aircraft carrier that the Secretary of the Navy and the Carter administration both had deemed unnecessary. He did this by lobbying as the Navy's liaison to the Senate. So he lobbied for a pork-barrel project. There's our maverick!
  
• His close involvement with Charles Keating, the disgraced businessman who was jailed for defrauding investors.
  
  McCain still attributes the attention to nothing more than Keating's "great respect for military people" and the duo's "political and personal affinity." But Keating, for his part, made no bones about the purpose of his giving. When asked by reporters if the investments he made in politicians bought their loyalty and influence on his behalf, Keating replied, "I want to say in the most forceful way I can, I certainly hope so."
  
• He voted against Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
  
• How about this:
  
  In 1983, McCain broke with (Ronald) Reagan to vote against the deployment of Marine peacekeepers to Lebanon. The unorthodox stance caught the attention of the media — including this very magazine, which praised McCain's "enormous courage." It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. McCain recognized early on how the game was played: The Washington press corps "tend to notice acts of political independence from unexpected quarters," he later noted. "Now I was debating Lebanon on programs like MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post. I was gratified by the attention and eager for more."
  
  What does that say about a person that he may make decisions about policy and important national matters based the press attention he may receive?
  
• McCain's role in the deregulation of insurance companies and brokerage houses and banks, which has led to the current financial crisis the country is currently in.
  
• McCain's involvement with several companies to get them favors and in return receiving donations from those companies.
  
• Tales of McCain's incredible temper and confrontations, including one with the wheelchair bound elderly mother of an MIA soldier who he almost punched in the face and pushed her wheelchair away.
  
• From the article:
  
  At least three of McCain's GOP colleagues have gone on record to say that they consider him temperamentally unsuited to be commander in chief. (GOP Sen. Bob ) Smith, the former senator from New Hampshire, has said that McCain's "temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him." Sen. (Pete) Domenici of New Mexico has said he doesn't "want this guy anywhere near a trigger." And Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi weighed in that "the thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded."
  
• From the article:
  
  "He's going to be Bush on steroids," says (John) Johns, the retired brigadier general who has known McCain since their days at the National War College. "His hawkish views now are very dangerous. He puts military at the top of foreign policy rather than diplomacy, just like George Bush does. He and other neoconservatives are dedicated to converting the world to democracy and free markets, and they want to do it through the barrel of a gun."
  
• He was very active in promoting and pushing the Iraq War... even before Dick Cheney! He declared after we started fighting in Afghanistan that Baghdad was next. (Gee, isn't that telegraphing your military intentions, similar as to what he's been accusing Obama of doing with Pakistan?)
  
• McCain's proclaimed that the Iraq War would be easy and we would be greeted as liberators, only to claim later that "...many of us fully understood from the beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking." He was wrong about military decisions and then denied it.
  
• McCain's history of flip-flopping on issues:
  
  - Regulation: He's always had a history of being in the favor of deregulation, but now that the economy has tanked, he's been in support of more regulation of the banking and housing industries. Way to stand behind your convictions!
  
  - Bush's Tax Cuts: McCain was against the Bush Tax Cuts in 2001. Now he's saying he wants to extend and increase them if elected. He's doing this to gather support from the anti-tax conservatives.
  
  - Oil Drilling: He was always against off-shore oil drilling. Now he's supporting it. How long until he changes his mind and says OK to ANWR?
  
  - Lobbying: Even though he was a lobbyist for the Navy at one time in his career, he tried to ban "registered lobbyists from working on political campaigns, now deploys 170 lobbyists in key positions as fundraisers and advisers."
  
  - Torture: In 2005 fought to stop the torture of enemy combatants. The article says:
  
  ...barely a year later, as he prepared to launch his presidential campaign, McCain cut a deal with the White House that allows the Bush administration to imprison detainees indefinitely and to flout the Geneva Conventions' prohibitions against torture.
  
  - Campaigning: From the article:
  
  But perhaps the most revealing of McCain's flip-flops was his promise, made at the beginning of the year, that he would "raise the level of political dialogue in America." McCain pledged he would "treat my opponents with respect and demand that they treat me with respect." Instead, with Rove protégé Steve Schmidt at the helm, McCain has turned the campaign into a torrent of debasing negativity, misrepresenting Barack Obama's positions on everything from sex education for kindergarteners to middle-class taxes. In September, in one of his most blatant embraces of Rove-like tactics, McCain hired Tucker Eskew — one of Rove's campaign operatives who smeared the senator and his family during the 2000 campaign in South Carolina.
  
  Throughout the campaign this year, McCain has tried to make the contest about honor and character. His own writing gives us the standard by which he should be judged. "Always telling the truth in a political campaign," he writes in Worth the Fighting For, "is a great test of character." He adds: "Patriotism that only serves and never risks one's self-interest isn't patriotism at all. It's selfishness. That's a lesson worth relearning from time to time." It's a lesson, it would appear, that the candidate himself could stand to relearn.

So there you have it. That's the type of man John McCain is. An angry, controlling, bullying, cheating, self-interested flip-flopper who will do anything to help himself. As much as he claims to have more military experience, he hasn't shown much judgement when it comes to military action. He doesn't stand up for his own priciples, having been a lobbyist and done his own work to get earmarks through.

Is this who people really want to be President? Wow.