James Wolcott has taken his verbal dagger to the public image of that favorite press darling, Maverick McCain: There's only one Maverick, and his name is James Garner 08/14/05.
I'm watching "maverick" John McCain on Fox News Sunday.
I hereby declare Operation Reach-Out over. There's no reasoning with these madmen. Certainly not this insatiable warrior. ...
On Fox, his eyes are less lasering, his jawline more relaxed, but a choleric hawk he remains, so fanatically hawkish that he opposes a drawdown of US troops in Iraq: "We don't need to withdraw--we need more troops there," and should reinforcements be unavailable, we should maintain current troop levels so that the newly trained Iraqi units aren't replacements for departing US troops but a "supplement" to them. ...
McCain will hear none of this defeatist talk. "We can't afford to fail," he emptily intoned, and then cleaved to Bush, claiming that Bush is no cold-hearted monster with no time for a Cindy Sheehan, no:
"He cares, and he grieves."
Message: He cares. Bring 'em on. Watch this shot.
It was also clear from the tone of McCain's remarks that he favors military action against Iran. It's difficult to think of any military action he wouldn't favor.
This man is too dangerous to let anywhere near the presidency. He's simply Dick Cheney with a better backstory.
"Dick Cheney with a better backstory" - oh, that's cold.
I wish I had come up with that phrase.
2 comments:
Hopefully this kind of stuff will keep him out of the Whitehouse. A lot of former supporters have been disillusioned with McCain because of his support for Bush. I sure don’t understand that seemingly unwavering support.
I'm not quite sure why it is, either. My guess is that for the mainstream press, he looks enough like someone who is being "counterintuitive" by occasionally opposing his party's consensus position in a visible way; the press loves "counterintuitivity".
Also, he's safely conventional enough that he's not going to rock any boats too hard, from the press' point of view. So they're willing to promote his "straight-shooter" claims and to celebrate him in ineffectively criticizing the occasion Bush administration policy. - Bruce
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