Four More Years of Bush

The Washington Post today reports about how the top levels of McCain's campaign, in particular the staff around Sarah Palin, are now rife with members of the Bush administration.

From Mark Wallace, a Bush appointee to the United Nations, to Tucker Eskew, who ran strategic communications for the Bush White House, to Greg Jenkins, who served as the deputy assistant to Bush in his first term and was executive director of the 2004 inauguration, Palin was surrounded on the trip home by operatives deeply rooted in the Bush administration.

The clutch of Bush veterans helping to coach Palin reflects a larger reality about Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign: Far from being a group of outsiders to the Republican Party power structure, it is now run largely by skilled operatives who learned their crafts in successive Bush campaigns and various jobs across the Bush government over the past eight years.

The team has been assembled and led by Steve Schmidt, a sharp-witted, low-key strategist who has emerged as the campaign's day-to-day operations chief after the ouster of a group of sometimes undisciplined McCain loyalists. Schmidt's operation is tightly run and hard-nosed -- made up of policy advisers, communications experts, advance people and lower-level aides, many of them old friends who have worked together for the last eight years, and whose presence lends a familiar vibe to the Palin operation.

Republicans have been heartened by the effectiveness of the new McCain organization, which has helped put McCain back in serious contention for the White House, causing restlessness among Democrats who believed the race was Sen. Barack Obama's to lose. Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, expressed pride at what her former colleagues have been able to accomplish.

"We had a great team -- they're the best in the business, and I'm sure the campaign feels fortunate to have them," Perino said.

People, people-do not delude yourselves that John McCain will bring any change to the White House. He will continue the same policies that have led to a failed war, a failed economy, and a barnkrupt government. The day after the election, let's have all of these Bushies updating their resumes.

DFW and John McCain

Over the last two days, I have been nose deep in the work of David Foster Wallace who, unless you don't own a computer, killed himself Friday evening. David suffered from severe depression and had obviously decided that all the medications and electro-shock treatments were not doing anything but prolonging his pain. We at Shambollocks know all too well the staggering difficulties faced by those who suffer from mental illness and their loved ones, and our deepest sympathy goes out to Mr. Wallace's family and friends.

I attended college in what may be called the 'DFW Epoch'. In 1996, Wallace's Infinte Jest was published, and it had the kind of impact in the literature world that Pulp Fiction (at which Wallace sneered) had on cinema. I started university taking creative writing classes and never even having heard of DFW. Everyone loved it! It was everyone's favorite novel, and everyone wanted to foot note their short stories. To an died-in-the-wool, conservative modernist like myself (yes, that's me-light years away from pure nerddom, orbiting an nebulae of academic arcana about which no one cares except lit majors), it was a travesty. I got Wallace. In fact, I believe Jest is fairly ingenious. But the truth was that his work was often too aware of itself, and that awareness made most of it so arch you wanted to watch two hours of commercials after reading him.

Wallace was brilliant. He had an ability to observe and communicate the differences in American society on which yet another political campaign cycle is feeding in order to create the dissonance so necessary for their brand of destructive, electoral vote calcuations. Nowhere is this better observed than in his essay about his week on the McCain Straight Talk Express in 2000 for Rolling Stone. Upon reading this, I am struck at how different the 2008 McCain is from the 2000 McCain.

There's another thing John McCain always says. He makes sure he concludes every speech and THM with it, so the buses' press hear it about too times this week. He always pauses a second for effect and then says: "I'm going to tell you something. I may have said some things here today that maybe you don't agree with, and I might have said some things you hopefully do agree with. But I will always. Tell you. The truth." This is McCain's closer, his last big reverb on the six-string as it were. And the frenzied standing-O it always gets from his audience is something to see. But you have to wonder: why do these crowds from Detroit to Charleston cheer so wildly at a simple promise not to lie?

Well it's obvious why. When McCain says it, the people are cheering not for him so much as for how good it feels to believe him. They're cheering the loosening of a weird sort of knot in the electoral tummy. McCain's resume and candor, in other words, promise not empathy with voters' pain, but relief from it. Because we've been lied to and lied to, and it hurts to be lied to. It's ultimately just about that complicated: it hurts. It denies you respect for yourself, for the liar, for the world. Especially if the lies are chronic, systemic, if hard experience seems to teach that everything you're supposed to believe in's really a game based on lies. Young Voters have been taught well and thoroughly. You may not personally remember Vietnam or Watergate, but it's a good bet you remember "No new taxes" and "Out of the loop" and "No direct knowledge of any impropriety at this time" and "Did not inhale" and "Did not have sex with that woman" and etc. etc. It's depressing and painful to believe that the would-be "public servants" you're forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously with such a straight face that you just know they have to believe you're an idiot. So who wouldn't fall all over themselves for a top politician who actually seemed to talk to you like you were a person, an intelligent adult worthy of respect? A politician who all of a sudden out of nowhere comes on TV as this total long-shot candidate and says that Washington is paralyzed, that everybody there's been bought off, and that the only way to really "return government to the people" the way all the other candidates claim they want to do is to outlaw huge unreported political contributions from corporations and lobbies and PACs ... all of which are obvious truths that everybody knows but no recent politician's had the stones to say. Who wouldn't cheer, hearing stuff like this, especially from a guy we know chose to sit in a dark box for four years instead of violate a Code? Even in A.D. 2000, who among us is so cynical that he doesn't have some good old corny American hope way down deep in his heart, lying dormant like a spinster's ardor, not dead but just waiting for the Right Guy to give it to? That John S. McCain III opposed making Martin Luther King's birthday a holiday, or that he thinks clear-cut logging is good for America, or that he feels our present gun laws are not clinically insane — this stuff counts for nothing with these Town Hall crowds, all on their feet, cheering their own ability to finally really fucking cheer.

Unbelievable. Where is this John McCain? Where is the independent McCain who almost was Kerry's running mate in '04? Where is the McCain who spoke out against the Swift-Boating of Sen. Kerry? Why is McCain's campaign lying about what Obama says and lying about what Palin did in Alaska?

The John McCain of 2000 is gone, and so now is DFW. I mourn both today-one who promised a kind of bold leadership that America still needs, and another who so deeply mourned a brand of American political debate which understood our differences. Both men shall be missed.

Wow! McCain's Chelsea Clinton Joke

The Presidential campaign now appears neck-and-neck, thereby abiding by the MSM's vested interest. I am not shocked by this, but I am shocked at the joke Sen. McCain told earlier last month at a Republican Senate fund-raiser.

"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
Because her father is Janet Reno."

Thank you, Salon. No major media outlet printed this 'joke'. A few outlets made mention of an offensive comment. I don't want to get into a tangential argument over the media's bizarre dislike of Hillary, but what I do want to do is highlight the kind of man Sen. McCain is.

I personally believe that character does matter in a candidate. Sen. McCain gets a free-ride on this issue because of his war experience, even though he did not suffer. But this man and his campaign have already gone on the defensive that attacks on Gov. Palin's family are (rightly) petty and mean. Well, what about lewd, non-funny ripostes about another fellow female candidate's family? And remember this incident?

Obama is no Messiah. But McCain is certainly a mean, bitter man. To paraphrase Nixon's comment about Barbara Bush, McCain 'sure do[es] know how to hate'.

Remember who you are voting for when you enter the booth.

You Make The Call!

The Daily Dish's Andrew Sullivan asks today's profound question: Was John McCain tortured?

To any reasonable person, and Sen. McCain himself repeatedly during this campaign, the answer would be yes. To the completely unreasonable people who created our current interrogation policy, it would be no. Sen. McCain, in another life (last year), voted for these new interrogation techniques.

Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation."

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the "intelligence" we have procured from "interrogating" terror suspects. Feel safer?

So let's ignore the fact that Sen. McCain was tortured, because according to what he voted for, he wasn't. Now he's just a POW. But he's not Jack Bauer, as he has been hilariously comparing himself to during this campaign.

Let's take the hero out of McCain, please. If he's a hero, than American interrogators have made heroes all over the Islamic world over the last few years.

Do You Want To Stop Fighting The Vietnam War?

I do. I was born five years after the last American soldier left. I am thirty-years old, and I wish to live in a country which can get past the scarring, divisive wars of yesterday and settle on ending the wars of today. I do not wish for the next President of the United States to be, physically, carrying around the scars from that conflict.

As Col. Trautman told John Rambo, I believe we should all tell Sen. McCain.

"It's over, Johnny."

Do you want a hawk who was, days after 9/11, ready to attack Syria, Iran, and Iraq according to the New York Times?

“There is a system out there or network, and that network is going to have to be attacked,” Mr. McCain said the next morning on ABC News. “It isn’t just Afghanistan,” he added, on MSNBC. “I don’t think if you got bin Laden tomorrow that the threat has disappeared,” he said on CBS, pointing toward other countries in the Middle East.

Within a month he made clear his priority. “Very obviously Iraq is the first country,” he declared on CNN. By Jan. 2, Mr. McCain was on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!”

Do you trust this man with the security of our country and armed forces? A man who cannot, understandably, see outside the context of his own Hanoi imprisonment?

A vote for McCain means we will be dealing with the Iraq and Afganistan wars in 2012-guaranteed. Let's bring the soldiers home.

Great John McCain Profile from Arizona

The Phoenix New Times News (no, I've never heard of them either) has a wonderful profile on John McCain entitled 'Postmodern John McCain: the presidential candidate some Arizonans know- and loath' It seems Sen. McCain is not as popular in his home state as his campaign would leave us to believe. The story gives us a glimpse of the '80s John McCain, the Senator who got himself inextricably involved in the savings and loans scandal (think mortgage crisis for the '80s) by becoming close, personal friends with Charlie Keating. I don't want to rehash the whole episode, which this articles does well, but there is an anecdote that should be told.

In the late '80s, Arizona was suffering through an Illinois-like rash of political corruption. The Republican governor at the time, Evan Mecham, was impeached and the long-serving Democratic secretary of state, Rose Mofford, stepped up to serve out the rest of his term. A week into her tenure, Rose made a trip to Washington where she would make a perfuntory appearance before the Senate Energy and Water Development Subcommittee on Appropriations on the topic of the Central Arizona Project (the '60s era water project which allows for humans to live in Arizona). Rose had not been briefed extensively on the project.

At the hearing, Republican Senator James McClure fired a series of complex questions at Rose which left her staff scrambling to find the answers. That same day, Pat Murphy, publisher of the Arizona Republic, arrived at the Senate with his wife to take McCain out to lunch. Murphy tells the rest of the story to the News writer via email:

"During lunch, McCain said, almost with mischievous glee, that he had slipped some highly technical questions to [James McClure] to ask Mofford — questions she wouldn't be prepared to answer or expected to answer.

"Flabbergasted, I asked McCain why would he want to sabotage Mofford's testimony, when in fact the CAP was the nonpartisan pet of Republicans and Democrats — such as far-left Udall and far-right Goldwater — since its inception.

"His reply, as near as I remember, was, 'I'll embarrass a Democrat any time I get the chance.'

Whatever my disappointment with Obama's centrist poses the last couple of months, my belief that he will steer us away from the vehemently personal Washington partisanship of the last generation has not wavered. I am sick of watching the unending conflict over the cultural gulf which exists between conservative and liberal boomers. Vietnam and the civil rights marches ended thirty-five years ago, people. Get over it! Stop licking wounds incurred when Nixon resigned and educate yourself on the fairly progressive country you happen to represent.

McCain represents our country's past. Let's make that distant past history. Finally.

Is John McCain Stupid?

No, that's the real title of an editorial in the Wall Street Journal today by Daniel Henninger.

The one thing -- arguably the only thing -- the McCain candidacy has going for it is a sense among voters that they don't know what Barack Obama stands for or believes. Why then would Mr. McCain give voters reason to wonder the same thing about himself? You're supposed to sow doubt about the other guy, not do it to yourself.

John, John, John, with friends like these...right? What seems to have the right all up in arms this week is that McCain isn't staying on message like a brainless automaton, like...hmm, what's his name? Wood? Tree? I know it's something arboreal.

The reason McCain achieved any popularity is because he doesn't stay on message. It's his shtick. What, you expect Bob Hope to go blue?

John, you should have switched parties four years ago when Kerry offered you an out. These people never liked you, and now you just seem like a Wooderson at the dork party, trying to beat the squares at Clue.

Hey, at least all the baby-boomer media still think you're pretty cool.

MSM to McCain: No Chance, Buddy

The Mainstream Media (MSM here in the blogosphere) has not yet canceled their Barack Obama Victory Tour. You can't get more MSM than Time, where Michael Grunwald writes that McCain doesn't stand a chance.

Last week, the McCain campaign's case against Barack Obama went something
like this: He's irresponsible when it comes to Iraq, naive when it comes to
Iran, and a big-government liberal when it comes to the economy. But now Iraqi
Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has more or less endorsed Obama's plan to
withdraw from Iraq, forcing McCain to argue that Maliki didn't really mean it,
and even the Bush administration has accepted a "time horizon" for withdrawal,
if not a precise "timetable." The Bush administration has also engaged in some
diplomatic outreach with Iran, just as Obama has recommended, a severe blow to
McCain's efforts to portray Obama's willingness to talk as appeasement. And on
the economy, a TIME/Rockefeller Foundation poll found that 82% of the country
supports more federal infrastructure spending designed to create jobs. When
big-government liberalism is all the rage, McCain's courage in opposing water
projects or the farm bill becomes less of a selling point.

Wow. Part of me is still incredulous as to the glowing press Obama has received. Where was this press for Kerry or Gore? Nowhere to be found, I guess. Mostly because Kerry and Gore could wave eight balls around and get ignored by a junkie. Obama has fully recovered from his ghastly FISA vote. The New Yorker imbroglio makes him look sympathetic, and this week's world tour makes him look like the Anti-Bush.

Two things to be pleased about: One, the Rove Machine has not found a way to confound the media into spouting the Republican message. The story remains the crowds and money Barack attracts. Two, (and miraculously for Barack (the man most have a horseshoe jammed up somewhere)) the spineless Iraqi government has grown a pair over the last month and completely changed the context of the Iraq issue into one of national sovereignty. They don't want us there, and they're (finally!) ready to face the consequences. I've never said this, but-kudos to you, Maliki.

I am not optimistic that this will remain true, however. We have less than four months left, and the networks will be under great pressure to make this election as close as possible. Expect more positive McCain coverage in the next few months, as the MSM makes a mad attempt to make their made-for-TV spectacle as close as possible.