On August 28th, John McCain committed a howler on Face the Nation when he said, “I’m not knowledgeable” when asked how many more troops were needed in Iraq, given the fact that he had repeatedly called for them:
The howler came when he called for the escalation of the Iraq War in the face of increasing violence. When asked how many more troops were necessary by Bob Schieffer, he said, “About 20,000 more; I’m not that knowledgeable.” Then, if John McCain is not that knowledgeable about what must be done in the Iraq Conflict, then what the heck is he doing considering a run for President in 2008? And what the heck is he doing going on all the talk shows shilling for the administration?
This howler led me to wonder what else John McCain is not knowledgeable about. Now, I think I have an answer: John McCain is not knowledgeable about how Bush operates or acts. This was most evident on the torture deal where Bush supposedly caved in on the torture ban.
The way George Bush operates is to tell you what you want to hear and then do what he thinks is right. This was what he did with the Democrats during the leadup to the Iraq War. He told them that war would only be a last resort when he had already given the orders to begin the ground offensive and had already stepped up his bombing campaign against the Iraqis.
At first glance, it looked like a major victory for John McCain to proudly announce a deal with the White House to implement a torture ban. But, as a NY Times editorial points out, the White House made it clear that they would still be the ones to define torture. For example, from the editorial:
Mr. McCain’s amendment is attached to a malignant measure – introduced by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and now co-sponsored by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee – that would do grievous harm to the rule that the government cannot just lock you up without showing cause to a court. This fundamental principle of democratic justice must not be watered down so the Bush administration does not have to answer for the illegal detentions of hundreds of men at Guantanamo Bay and other prison camps.
The editorial goes on to point out that the Graham amendment allows for the use of evidence obtained by torture into proceedings. So therefore, if you illegally torture someone and get evidence from them, it will still be used as evidence in the courtroom. And furthermore, the editorial points out that there are now efforts by the right-wingers to pass laws exempting the Guantanamo detentions from judicial review.
John McCain does not understand that this is not just a matter of stopping torture. This is a basic attack on our freedom. The right-wingers want Congress to be able to have the power to tell the courts what they can and cannot review willy-nilly. But if they can do this, then the Constitution would have no meaning whatsoever. Congress could attach an amendment to any bill that they believed would not pass Constitutional muster saying that this bill cannot be subject to judicial review.
Also, the same editorial points out that no sooner was the ink dried on the Bush and McCain deal than Alberto Gonzales – who McCain voted for, by the way – declared that the White House would still be the ones to define torture:
Mr. Bush had barely announced his deal with Mr. McCain before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made it crystal clear that the administration would define torture any way it liked. He said on CNN that torture meant the intentional infliction of severe physical or mental harm, and repeated the word “severe” twice. He would not even say whether that included “waterboarding” – tormenting a prisoner by making him think he is being drowned.
So, John McCain is not credible when it comes to torture. He supported Gonzales. He may pay all the lip service he wants to opposing the use of torture. But when it comes time to act on his beliefs, then he flip-flops and votes for the people who were among the chief architects of the torture policy. John McCain lack knowledge of how to act on his beliefs.
A couple of days before the deal was announced, the NY Times also reported that Rumsfeld – another person who McCain voted for, by the way – was rewriting the Army Field Manual so that it could weasel out of the intent of the new McCain bill. The Pentagon did a 10-page revision of the Army Field Manual which is classified. Here is what I wrote at the time:
Like a kid in class trying to see what they can and can’t get away with, the Pentagon is now testing McCain to see what they can get away with before he goes off on them. Will McCain let this new twisting of right and wrong go unchallenged? We know that McCain, despite the nasty swift-boating of his campaign by Bush in 2000 has still followed Bush around like a lapdog ever since. I wonder if Bush has decided that McCain, at some point, will not have the guts to sustain a fight with the White House over this issue. Or maybe that they can wring concessions out of McCain elsewhere and make him sacrifice his principles on some other area.
And John McCain is letting them. I have not heard one word out of him about these new efforts by the Pentagon to weasel out of his new bill – already watered down. I hope for his sake I never become a principal and have to consider hiring him as a teacher. If pushed hard enough, he would not maintain control of the classroom, as people would be able to get away with a ton of stuff. John McCain did not have the guts to put an end to the White House efforts to weasel out of his bill.
There is no denying that McCain’s biggest strength is his initial aura of normalcy and decency. But the closer you look at his record, the more a pattern emerges of him as a reliable shill for Bush cloaked in a mask of independence. For example:
Under first impressions, John McCain also conveys a sense of normalcy. He is seen as a straight-shooter who will be an independent voice in Washington. Yet he has permanently damaged that standing with his lack of knowledge about Iraq and his resultant hewing to the Bush party line, except on torture. He sounds like one of those apocalyptic fundamentalists out of the Left Behind series when he warns about the dire consequences of ever leaving Iraq. Like Clinton and Bush, he is adept in the art of banging one’s head against the brick wall.
The danger of a McCain candidacy is that he might exploit people’s longing for a strong man to deal with the turmoil that Bush has plunged this country into. Already, people like the LA Times columnist Niall Ferguson are biting. He wrote:
So, who will the American Hadrian be? I have no idea, but I hope it will be John McCain. Once the impending political hurricane has passed, the United States will need someone of his caliber to consolidate its empire — and clean up the messes left by the circuses at home.
I responded:
That is exactly the problem that is plaguing our society — the longing for a strong man who will take us to the promised land. That is why we got Bush in the first place — too many people wanted to elect someone who was a strong man, rather than a person who could inspire us to vote our hopes and not our fears. And that is why we got Bush again — people wanted a strong man who could protect them against the evil terrorists. So, when Mr. Ferguson proposes a strong man to clean up the mess that George Bush made, sorry, I’m not buying.
The problem with people like McCain, Guliani, and Clinton is that they essentially offer nothing new to the table on Iraq. All three of them would offer the same old cut-and-dried solutions that haven’t worked. All three of them would stay in Iraq until all the Iraqi troops are trained, which, by the current pace, would take another 200 years if you consider that being able to fight on your own without backup.
The problem with John McCain is that he is not a strong man, he is more like a battered wife who refuses to leave their situation. He is in a state of Learned Helplessness. Scientists have done studies on dogs who could not leave a certain area without getting a nasty electrical shock. They discovered that after a certain time, if you removed the shocks, the dogs would still refuse to leave the area. That is the state of mind that John McCain is in right now.
In an abusive relationship, the woman will frequently cut deals with the abusive husband and usually succeed in getting him to agree to stop beating her. But notice I used the phrase “agreed to.” Because when the woman is safely back in the abusive situation and all of the scrutiny is gone, the husband will go right back to beating her and abusing her.
In the same way, the relationship between Bush and McCain is following the same pattern. This all started when George Bush began the abusive behavior through his smear campaign against John McCain in the 2000 Primaries. Ever since then, McCain has become more and more like an obedient lapdog.
But John McCain discovered a situation which outraged his sensibilities, being that he was tortured himself. He proposed a bill to ban the practice and got 90 Senators to sign on. But instead of sticking to his guns, knowing that he had veto-proof majorities of Senators and Congressmen behind him, he believed the Bush administration when they said they would not do it anymore if only he would water it down just a tad by attaching it to the Graham Amendment and look the other way while they weaseled out of the ban. And once hands were shaken and the cameras were turned off, the Bush administration, with a little help from Gonzales, went right back to saying it was ok to torture.