The commonsense of the masses
Jun. 5th, 2008 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbI have been thinking. I am increasingly convinced that, by choosing John McCain as presidential candidate, the Republican rank and file showed much greater wisdom than their leaders and their opinion makers. They picked the only candidate who stands a chance against the Dem-of-the-day - I do not mean Hillary or Barack; I mean anyone whom the Democrats could have chosen. Let us face it, in the circumstances of 2008, the Democrats really could have run the yellow dog of the old joke, and got it to the White House.
Bush II comes to the end of eight years in office not only with the famously unpopular war that everyone complains about, but also with a monumental ongoing deficit (whatever moves may have taken place in the final few years) and debt, an increasingly sinister economic crisis that is not only threatening Americans in their own homes but giving them plenty of time to worry about it, and a frightful air of sleaze and corruption in Congress, epitomized by the word "earmarks". President Bush II has done nothing to stop the sleaze and moral rot - he never saw a single earmark bad enough to deserve a veto, not even that famous road in Alaska that joined a community of fifty souls to the mainland - showed no sign whatever that he had seen the crisis coming or that he understood his seriousness, and has been the driving force behind the budget crisis. And in all this, the Republican leadership has followed him supinely. In these circumstances, the fact that McCain makes no claim to economic competence is a positive advantage. No matter what the rights and wrongs of economic theory are (and I am no lover of free market ideology), no sane American in 2008 would listen to a Republican candidate who based his candidacy on economic competence. Add the festering sore of health care, which costs Americans more than twice as much as other countries [EDITED IN: this is incorrect and I have corrected it in the Comments below] and yet leaves one-tenth of the population uncovered and a substantial further proportion undercovered, and that the Republicans are doing anything and everything to keep as it is; and you will have a recipe for complete rejection of any REpublican platform based on economic views. I repeat: it is not a matter of whether Republican free marketeering is better or worse than the alternative; it is a matter of what the political situation is right now. Maybe in twenty years it will turn out that the Republicans had it right all the time; meanwhile, in the real world, electors are living in a slow-moving economic collapse garnished with corruption and debt, and they are not going to take seriously the economic competence of the party that led it.
This is McCain's first selling point: he is not up to his neck in Republican economics, and he is an avowed and vocal enemy of bipartisan sleaze. His opposition to earmarks and port is surely the first thing that resonated with the bewildered and depressed Republican nation, sick at heart from all the stream of ugly, foul-smelling news from their capital. And the rest of the country will not feel different either.
The second is his position on foreign policy. At a time when the conventional wisdom was to distance oneself as far and as fast as one could from Bush II's supposedly doomed occupation of Iraq, McCain did not flinch, and distinguished himself as a constructive critic whose suggestions bore a remarkable resemblance to the so-called "surge" which appears to have turned the tide. This suggests that the man has character, and, what is more, that he understands military matters. Most Americans, indeed most people in the West, would not, I think, support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq; the commonsense position (and incidentally that of the Pope) is that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the original invasion, it would be both wrong and disastrous to leave Iraq while violence is still commonplace and terrorists powerful. Italians I know who loathe Bush II and regard the war as purely aggressive, nevertheless could not bring themselves to believe that any serious candidate would promise immediate evacuation; it would be a political disaster much worse than Vietnam, they said, a deadly blow to American prestige, and an immmense advantage to terrorists. The American electorate seems to agree, and Hillary, with her better ear for the common man and woman, made electoral hay of it. But Obama himself, who is anything but a fool, has quickly understood that he was on a hiding to nothing with his foreign policy proposals. That is why he turned down out of hand McCain's proposal of a joint visit to Iraq; he knew that it would only redound to the older man's advantage. And at any rate, even when compared to Hillary, McCain's credibility on this issue is enormously greater.
And that is a part of a greater advantage. The one area in which a Republican can hope to beat a Democrat, even today, is foreign policy. Most Americans do believe that terrorism, especially Islamic terrorism, is a serious threat; and that, while such nations as Venezuela may not pose a major domestic threat to the US, nonetheless their governments are pernicious and need opposing. They would not wish to see an invasion of Venezuela, but would be glad of an aggressively anti-Chavez foreign policy - to mention only this instance. The instincts of the Democrat leadership in this matter are far out of synch with those of their own electorate, and I find it significant that after Nancy Pelosi's extraordinary visit to Syria, no Democratic leader (except for the loose cannon Carter, who is hardly a party leader these days) has tried any further stunts. One rather imagines that Ms.Pelosi and her colleagues must have heard a few interesting comments from their own supporters. But whether or not the DEmocrats are ready to listen to their electors and their critics, the fact is that in foreign policy they simply cannot compete with McCain. He has always been where he is now, whereas Obama leaves the impression of learning on the job and Hillary of sharing her husband's tendency to pull both ways. Americans want a President who will stand up to the Chavezes and put the fear of God into the Ahmedinajads; McCain is the closest they are offered.
That being the case, the behaviour of the Republican leadership seems frankly suicidal. They are rumoured to be trying or to have tried to convince McCain to accept Mitt Romney as his running mate, under the impression that Romney would give the campaign a necessary polish of economic competence. That is insane on many grounds. First, nobody believes in Republican economic competence today. Second, even the Republican electorate roundly rejected Romney, in spite of his immense expenditure. And the reason is not hard to find. As Mike Huckabee rightly and wittily said, you want to elect someone who looks like your next-door neighbour, not someone who looks like the man who pink-slipped your next-door neighbour. In spite of the love affair of a few Republican commentators with corporations, most Americans, including most Republicans, detest them. My American cousins, Republicans to a man, took delight in being told the story of the two English anarchists (not a species Republicans ordinarily love) who took MacDonald's all the way to the highest court in Britain after being bullyingly sued over an anti-Mac leaflet. And Romney adds to the negative count of "corporate stooge" the further negative count of "corporate stooge with no principles". Before he re-invented himself as the champion of conservatism, Romney had been a widely popular (with liberals) governor of Massachusetts. The Republican base, who kept hearing horror stories of liberal intolerance and persecution from Boston, drew its own conclusions, and nothing Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter could do could change their minds. (So much for their being "ignorant and easily led"; Democratic leadership, pay attention.) And now Bush II and the Congressional leadership wish to reward this unprincipled defeat with a shot at the vice-presidency.
I would tell them, leave the man alone. In the words of Lucille Ball, he knows the combination to the safe. He has fought the only successful Republican campaign in a year of complete disaster. He does not need to be hobbled with a partner who is associated with a class that most Americans dislike, and with a party whose domestic policies are, at present, largely discredited.
Bush II comes to the end of eight years in office not only with the famously unpopular war that everyone complains about, but also with a monumental ongoing deficit (whatever moves may have taken place in the final few years) and debt, an increasingly sinister economic crisis that is not only threatening Americans in their own homes but giving them plenty of time to worry about it, and a frightful air of sleaze and corruption in Congress, epitomized by the word "earmarks". President Bush II has done nothing to stop the sleaze and moral rot - he never saw a single earmark bad enough to deserve a veto, not even that famous road in Alaska that joined a community of fifty souls to the mainland - showed no sign whatever that he had seen the crisis coming or that he understood his seriousness, and has been the driving force behind the budget crisis. And in all this, the Republican leadership has followed him supinely. In these circumstances, the fact that McCain makes no claim to economic competence is a positive advantage. No matter what the rights and wrongs of economic theory are (and I am no lover of free market ideology), no sane American in 2008 would listen to a Republican candidate who based his candidacy on economic competence. Add the festering sore of health care, which costs Americans more than twice as much as other countries [EDITED IN: this is incorrect and I have corrected it in the Comments below] and yet leaves one-tenth of the population uncovered and a substantial further proportion undercovered, and that the Republicans are doing anything and everything to keep as it is; and you will have a recipe for complete rejection of any REpublican platform based on economic views. I repeat: it is not a matter of whether Republican free marketeering is better or worse than the alternative; it is a matter of what the political situation is right now. Maybe in twenty years it will turn out that the Republicans had it right all the time; meanwhile, in the real world, electors are living in a slow-moving economic collapse garnished with corruption and debt, and they are not going to take seriously the economic competence of the party that led it.
This is McCain's first selling point: he is not up to his neck in Republican economics, and he is an avowed and vocal enemy of bipartisan sleaze. His opposition to earmarks and port is surely the first thing that resonated with the bewildered and depressed Republican nation, sick at heart from all the stream of ugly, foul-smelling news from their capital. And the rest of the country will not feel different either.
The second is his position on foreign policy. At a time when the conventional wisdom was to distance oneself as far and as fast as one could from Bush II's supposedly doomed occupation of Iraq, McCain did not flinch, and distinguished himself as a constructive critic whose suggestions bore a remarkable resemblance to the so-called "surge" which appears to have turned the tide. This suggests that the man has character, and, what is more, that he understands military matters. Most Americans, indeed most people in the West, would not, I think, support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq; the commonsense position (and incidentally that of the Pope) is that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the original invasion, it would be both wrong and disastrous to leave Iraq while violence is still commonplace and terrorists powerful. Italians I know who loathe Bush II and regard the war as purely aggressive, nevertheless could not bring themselves to believe that any serious candidate would promise immediate evacuation; it would be a political disaster much worse than Vietnam, they said, a deadly blow to American prestige, and an immmense advantage to terrorists. The American electorate seems to agree, and Hillary, with her better ear for the common man and woman, made electoral hay of it. But Obama himself, who is anything but a fool, has quickly understood that he was on a hiding to nothing with his foreign policy proposals. That is why he turned down out of hand McCain's proposal of a joint visit to Iraq; he knew that it would only redound to the older man's advantage. And at any rate, even when compared to Hillary, McCain's credibility on this issue is enormously greater.
And that is a part of a greater advantage. The one area in which a Republican can hope to beat a Democrat, even today, is foreign policy. Most Americans do believe that terrorism, especially Islamic terrorism, is a serious threat; and that, while such nations as Venezuela may not pose a major domestic threat to the US, nonetheless their governments are pernicious and need opposing. They would not wish to see an invasion of Venezuela, but would be glad of an aggressively anti-Chavez foreign policy - to mention only this instance. The instincts of the Democrat leadership in this matter are far out of synch with those of their own electorate, and I find it significant that after Nancy Pelosi's extraordinary visit to Syria, no Democratic leader (except for the loose cannon Carter, who is hardly a party leader these days) has tried any further stunts. One rather imagines that Ms.Pelosi and her colleagues must have heard a few interesting comments from their own supporters. But whether or not the DEmocrats are ready to listen to their electors and their critics, the fact is that in foreign policy they simply cannot compete with McCain. He has always been where he is now, whereas Obama leaves the impression of learning on the job and Hillary of sharing her husband's tendency to pull both ways. Americans want a President who will stand up to the Chavezes and put the fear of God into the Ahmedinajads; McCain is the closest they are offered.
That being the case, the behaviour of the Republican leadership seems frankly suicidal. They are rumoured to be trying or to have tried to convince McCain to accept Mitt Romney as his running mate, under the impression that Romney would give the campaign a necessary polish of economic competence. That is insane on many grounds. First, nobody believes in Republican economic competence today. Second, even the Republican electorate roundly rejected Romney, in spite of his immense expenditure. And the reason is not hard to find. As Mike Huckabee rightly and wittily said, you want to elect someone who looks like your next-door neighbour, not someone who looks like the man who pink-slipped your next-door neighbour. In spite of the love affair of a few Republican commentators with corporations, most Americans, including most Republicans, detest them. My American cousins, Republicans to a man, took delight in being told the story of the two English anarchists (not a species Republicans ordinarily love) who took MacDonald's all the way to the highest court in Britain after being bullyingly sued over an anti-Mac leaflet. And Romney adds to the negative count of "corporate stooge" the further negative count of "corporate stooge with no principles". Before he re-invented himself as the champion of conservatism, Romney had been a widely popular (with liberals) governor of Massachusetts. The Republican base, who kept hearing horror stories of liberal intolerance and persecution from Boston, drew its own conclusions, and nothing Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter could do could change their minds. (So much for their being "ignorant and easily led"; Democratic leadership, pay attention.) And now Bush II and the Congressional leadership wish to reward this unprincipled defeat with a shot at the vice-presidency.
I would tell them, leave the man alone. In the words of Lucille Ball, he knows the combination to the safe. He has fought the only successful Republican campaign in a year of complete disaster. He does not need to be hobbled with a partner who is associated with a class that most Americans dislike, and with a party whose domestic policies are, at present, largely discredited.
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What?
Date: 2008-06-05 01:49 pm (UTC)The man's opposed to port? He's mad. Mad. And he'd best stay far from my cellar.
Now, if you'd be so kind as to give the decanter a shove in this direction?
Re: What?
Date: 2008-06-05 02:05 pm (UTC)(and as for the mistype - WHOOOOOPS!!)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-05 04:49 pm (UTC)Most of the polls seem to show otherwise, though. Here's the latest CBS/NYTimes poll:
Rasmussen has been polling this since last year, and they've consistently shown that at least 59% of Americans want to withdraw troops in the next year.
You can see various other polls on this, which take a broadly consistent position.
The American electorate seems to agree, and Hillary, with her better ear for the common man and woman, made electoral hay of it.
Really? My impression was that Clinton's plan was essentially the same as Obama's, and that her responses to the questions during the debate (i.e., would she keep continuing the withdrawal regardless of conditions on the ground?) were basically the same as well.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-05 05:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-05 05:27 pm (UTC)Click on the links; they include the question asked. It's usually some variation of "When it comes to the War in Iraq, the U.S. should ..." or "What would you prefer the next president do about the war in Iraq."
no subject
Date: 2008-06-05 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-07 10:38 am (UTC)Also, he vetoed at least two bills that I can think of for pork reasons:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/13/bush.budget/index.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/21/AR2008052101313.html?nav=rss_politics
2008 funding bill, and this years farm bill.
He's no great conservative, but he HAS done SOMETHING==which is more than I can say for the @#$@# that voted to outlaw incandescents.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 08:50 pm (UTC)agreed. And I think the Dems may have picked just about the only guy who could lose this one. I've always liked McCain. He's not perfect but who is. Unfortunately, he seems to have decided to try pandering balony in this cycle. It's actually getting to be a toss up for me, which I never would have expected.
I correct a gross mistake
Date: 2008-07-11 04:38 am (UTC)