Dick Cheney:
OpEd: Largest expansion of executive power since TR
Teddy Roosevelt wouldn't have been able to pursue a robust foreign policy without concentrating power in the executive branch to a degree not seen since Abraham Lincoln, and matched thereafter only by Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, an
George W. Bush. Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to govern extensively through executive ordered. Perhaps only Dick Cheney--"as capable and sensible a public servant as I've known,"
McCain has said--has done more to expand the legal boundaries of the executive office than Teddy Roosevelt. Which wins nothing but praise from John
McCain: "He invented the modern presidency by liberally interpreting the constitutional authority of the office to redress the imbalance of power between the executive and legislative branches."
Source: The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch, p.149-150
Oct 9, 2007
John McCain:
Considers his heroes as one of his qualifications to lead
McCain said: "I am prepared to lead. My life and my experience and my background and my heroes inspire me and qualify me to lead in this titanic struggle." (Emphasis added.)
Everybody has heroes. Some of us (including Giuliani and former New Yorker editor Tina Brown) list McCain among them. But does that quality of our chosen inspiration "qualify" us for the highest office in the land?
McCain apparently takes that curious notion seriously enough that he made the same comment on Bill O'Reilly's TV show just days before ("I believe my whole life, my inspiration, my heroes and my experience have qualified
me to serve"), then quickly sent out press releases highlighting that line, and repeated the idea yet again in interviews just following the New Hampshire debate.
Source: The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch, p. 2-3
Oct 9, 2007
John McCain:
Op-Ed: Unexamined as both straight-talker and as maverick
Neither the straight-talking maverick of 1999-2000 nor the fallen saint of 2007 was a very revealing caricature to begin with. Both are functions of an intriguing and little-understood paradox of modern politics: that John McCain, both in spite of and
because of his overexposure in the media, is one of the most journalistically under-examined major candidates running for president.
We all know the dazzling highlights from his larger-than-life biography--the torture in Vietnam, the Straight-Talk
insurgency, the campaign finance reform, maybe even some traces from the Keating Five scandal. But how might these experiences translate into future performance as president?
With such an epic bio to convey, and the anecdote-generating distraction of
constant success, there wasn’t much time or space to analyze McCain’s actual political philosophy and track record. As a direct result, much of what we think we know about John McCain is wrong. He does not, for instance, talk particularly straight.
Source: The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch, p. xv-xviii
Oct 9, 2007
John McCain:
Philosophy of worthy sacrifice from For Whom the Bell Tolls
In his 2002 book, McCain writes, “I had not the wit to articulate the truth [that Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls] taught or the wisdom to really understand it.” Now older & wiser, McCain thinks he has finally cracked the mystery of the “worth
the fighting for” phrase that he can’t get out of his mind. “To me it means everything,” he said in a 2005 radio interview. “Maximize your time, be associated with a cause greater than your self-interest. Care about the world--not just your own self --
which is the opportunity that the US has as a nation today, because we’re the most powerful nation in history.“
It takes real message discipline to convert the fuel of an essentially anti-imperialist novel into the fire of virtuous empire. [But McCain
was] initially thrilled for an altogether different reason. [Describing the book’s protagonist], McCain said, ”He’s a man who’s willing to sacrifice his life for what he believes in, even if what he believes in he realizes is flawed in many respects.“
Source: The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch, p. 17
Oct 9, 2007
John McCain:
1983: Claiming Hanoi residency ended carpetbagger accusation
[In 1983, McCain was accused of carpetbagging in his run for Congress]. McCain wrote in 2002 how he responded to the justifiable criticism: “I was becoming pissed off by the carpetbagger label.”
What happened next has become the stuff of legend. At a
candidates’ forum, McCain was asked about his carpetbagging again & became irate. “Listen, pal,” he snapped. “I spent 22 years in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of spending my entire
life in a nice place like the 1st District of Arizona. As a matter of fact, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.“
It was a beautiful line, neutralizing the criticism once & for all, maybe even delivering that first election to McCain. It was
also, transparently, a lie: McCain lived in Arlington VA for at least five years as a kid, and several years later as Navy liaison. He wrapped himself in his imprisonment, and made his interlocutors feel like ungrateful chumps for even asking about it.
Source: The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch, p. 52-53
Oct 9, 2007
John McCain:
Keating Five scandal converted him to champion of reform
[In 1990], John McCain was panicked by the Keating Five scandal, a slow-burning ethics investigation into improper meetings McCain & four other senators held with banking regulators on behalf of his first political sponsor, thrift tycoon Charles Keating.
“Keating Five” had become synonymous with the Savings & Loan debacle that was then ripping through the headlines. “My popularity in Arizona was in a free fall,” he would later recall. “I expected a rough & quite possibly unsuccessful reelection campaign
in 1992.“
But as 1990 turned into 1991, with televised hearings making McCain’s face a national symbol of Beltway corruption, it was time to call in the big guns. McCain reached out to former AZ Senator Barry Goldwater, who had over the years finally
begun to warm to him [and politically recovered from the scandal].
The Keating Five corruption and campaign-finance scandal that for the first time threatened to derail his fast-track ambitions converted McCain into a champion of reform.
Source: The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch, p. 57-58 & 65
Oct 9, 2007
John McCain:
Focus on what America COULD do; not what gov't SHOULDN'T do
McCain writes in his biography: "No one had a more pronounced influence on my political convictions than Ronald Reagan. Most important [was] his eloquently stated belief in America's national greatness, his trust in our historical exceptionalism, the
shining city on the hill he invoked so often, in which I heard the echoes of my great political hero Teddy Roosevelt." Reagan spoke the language of restoration, of healing the wounds of Vietnam so that America could get back to the business of leading
the world by example and force. His "revolution," which was widely seen as the popular flowering of Goldwater's unpopular seeds if 1964, included healthy doses of libertarianism that McCain also endorsed at the time--"faith in the individual;
skepticism of government; free trade and vigorous capitalism." But what lit his eyes up for the beginning was not what the government SHOULDN'T do, but what Americans together COULD do.
Source: The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch, p. 63-64
Oct 9, 2007
John McCain:
Keating Five: investigated during 90s Savings & Loan scandal
[In 1987,] McCain, along with four Democratic senators, met with the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, to inquire about the regulatory agency’s two-year investigation into Charles Keating’s Lincoln Savings & Loan. Each senator had taken bundles of campaign
money from Keating in the past, totaling $1.4 million. Soon afterward, the senators were accused of improperly pressuring the regulators, which they hotly disputed.
There the story might have ended, except that over 1,000 Savings & Loan institutions
were busy collapsing, none larger than Lincoln Savings & Loan, whose failure would eventually cost taxpayers northward of $3 billion. Keating’s behavior would end in convictions for fraud, racketeering, and conspiracy.
Of the five senators, McCain had
had by far the closest relationship with Keating, but it had ended abruptly just before the senators’ meetings with the regulators in 1987, after Keating made the fatal mistake of calling McCain a “wimp”. McCain seethed at him, and that was that.
Source: The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch, p. 88-89
Oct 9, 2007
John McCain:
Spent 10 years “doing everything I can to control my temper”
Depending on his mood or the political necessities of the day, McCain has denied having much of a temper, acknowledged occasional flashes while defending his passion, or identified anger management in almost 12-Step-style terms. “When I ran in 2000, that
was an issue that was attempted to be raised,” he said in May 2007. “Didn’t work then, won’t work now.”
A full decade earlier, he confessed to USA Today that he had “spent the last 10 years doing everything I can to control my temper,” and in 1999 he
told the L.A. Times: “I wake up daily and tell myself, ‘You must everything possible to stay cool, calm and collected today.’ ”
One of the lazier myths about McCain is that this hairtrigger is somehow the result of his captivity in Vietnam. McCain’s ow
books are filled with examples of a pre-Vietnam John blowing his stack. We learn that a 2-year-old McCain would become so furious that he’d hold his breath until he passed out, a condition which his parents treated by dunking him in ice water.
Source: The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch, p.116-117
Oct 9, 2007
John McCain:
Emulates TR on vigor, nationalism, common good, intervention
What does McCain see in Roosevelt? The Roosevelt chapters in Worth Fighting For and Character is Destiny contain the four main Rooseveltian traits and principles that the modern-day maverick most admires. These are: personal vigor & courage
a preference for national unity over multiculturalism and individualism, preference for the common good over materialism, and embrace of superpower interventionism. Taken in order:
McCain, like Roosevelt, is famous for his boundless, restless,
productive energy.
Roosevelt's call for a nearly militaristic sense of citizenship has not dulled McCain's appetite for more of the same.
McCain writes, "Roosevelt, that common destiny surpassed material gain and self-interest. Our freedom and our
industry must aspire to more than acquisition and luxury." Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is the definition of authoritarianism.
There is literally no Roosevelt military action that McCain finds deserving of retrospective criticism.
Source: The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch, p.142-149
Oct 9, 2007
John McCain:
Praises Teddy Roosevelt's expansion of executive power
Teddy Roosevelt wouldn't have been able to pursue a robust foreign policy without concentrating power in the executive branch to a degree not seen since Abraham Lincoln, and matched thereafter only by Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, an
George W. Bush. Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to govern extensively through executive ordered. Perhaps only Dick Cheney--"as capable and sensible a public servant as I've known,"
McCain has said--has done more to expand the legal boundaries of the executive office than Teddy Roosevelt. Which wins nothing but praise from John
McCain: "He invented the modern presidency by liberally interpreting the constitutional authority of the office to redress the imbalance of power between the executive and legislative branches."
Source: The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch, p.149-150
Oct 9, 2007
John McCain:
Published 5 books over period of 8 years
McCain's 5 books each have their own timely & useful purpose.
Faith of My Fathers highlighted the senator's most winning personal story, while imposing an interpretation of redemption that cleared the decks for concentrating on the greater
cause of erasing public cynicism and embracing our nation's destiny.
Worth Fighting For, is a paean to irascible political independence and cross-partisan cooperation, showing the burn scars of the 2000 primary fight, while further developing
McCain's ideas for "national greatness."
Why Courage Matters, from 2004, is the sore thumb of the bunch, a perfunctory and unsatisfying attempt to answer his publisher's question of how Americans could go about finding their courage after Sep.
11.
Character Is Destiny, as detailed in chapter 11, is perfectly in keeping with McCain's rapprochement with the Religious Right.
And now Hard Call provides an opportunity to associate McCain with courageous decision-makers.
Source: The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch, p.198
Oct 9, 2007
Rudy Giuliani:
Lists John McCain as one of his heroes
McCain said: "I am prepared to lead. My life and my experience and my background and my heroes inspire me and qualify me to lead in this titanic struggle." (Emphasis added.)
Everybody has heroes. Some of us (including Giuliani and former New Yorker editor Tina Brown) list McCain among them. But does that quality of our chosen inspiration "qualify" us for the highest office in the land?
McCain apparently takes that curious notion seriously enough that he made the same comment on Bill O'Reilly's TV show just days before ("I believe my whole life, my inspiration, my heroes and my experience have qualified
me to serve"), then quickly sent out press releases highlighting that line, and repeated the idea yet again in interviews just following the New Hampshire debate.
Source: The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch, p. 2-3
Oct 9, 2007
NO LONGER IN USE 5/25/2009 -- use foot_Debate_Issue_2009.txt instead
The above quotations are from McCain The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch, published Oct. 2007.
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