Wednesday, March 26, 2008

John McCain: Pure Evil

I must publicly break with my pal Angus, on the McCain question. From my Reason homeboy Matt Welch, in the NYT:

BEHIND any successful politician lies a usable contradiction, and John McCain’s is this: We love him (and occasionally hate him) for his stubborn individualism, yet his politics are best understood as a decade-long attack on the individual.

The presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party has seduced the press and the public with frank confessions of his failings, from his hard-living flyboy days to his adulterous first marriage to the Keating Five scandal. But in both legislation and rhetoric, Mr. McCain has consistently sought to restrict the very freedoms he once exercised, in the common national enterprise of “serving a cause greater than self-interest.”

Such sentiment can sound stirring coming from a lone citizen freely choosing public service. But from a potential president, Mr. McCain’s exaltation of sacrifice over the private pursuit of happiness — “I did it out of patriotism, not for profit,” he snarled to Mitt Romney during the final Republican presidential debate — reflects a worryingly militaristic view of citizenship.


More Reason: Be Afraid of President McCain

4 comments:

Angus said...

Mungo: we both know that you are more likely to vote for McCain than I am. My love for him is extremely relative: with a guaranteed Dem Congress I prefer the Rep. to win the White House and I have long said I thought of Huckabee, Paul, Romney and McCain, evil Johnny is the most electable.

Do you think he's more at war against the individual than Hill or Barack?

Dirty Davey said...

Here's an additional thought--based on observation of the past four presidential terms.

If a Democratic president attempts to expand his power and the power of the state, the Republicans in Congress will fight like hell to prevent it, and often will succeed in preventing it, even if they are in the minority.

If a Republican president attempts to expand his power and the power of the state, particularly if he can cite "terrorism" or "national security" in support of his goals, the Democrats in Congress will make little or no effort to stop him, and he will succeed whether the Democrats are the majority or the minority.

So even if the presidential candidates of both parties are likely to overreach, a Republican president's power grabs are more likely to succeed than those of a Democratic president. So if you want to limit the president's power, vote Democrat.

Anonymous said...

Mungowitz - still feel this way after McCain's comments about the credit crunch and how we need to LOWER regulatory barriers and to allow investment banks greater access to capital? The comrades at NPR could barely contain their shock with they reported it yesterday.

Fundman

Dirty Davey said...

re: "McCain's comments about the credit crunch and how we need to LOWER regulatory barriers and to allow investment banks greater access to capital?"

But an investment bank is a CORPORATION, not an "individual". Giving corporations freedom to do what they want is not inconsistent with restricting the liberty of individual persons.

Liberty for corporations but not for individuals is, generally speaking, the platform of the modern Republican party.