On cue, here is today's high-minded quote from John McCain:
"All I can tell you Jennifer is that I think it's very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States. So apparently has Danny Ortega and several others. I think that people should understand that I will be Hamas's worst nightmare....If senator Obama is favored by Hamas I think people can make judgments accordingly."
Andrew Sullivan keeps telling us how a campaign between John McCain and Barack Obama would be a dignified campain of ideas, principles and substance and a break from the partisan hackery that we've experienced for much too long. But this quote is another example of the deep misjudgement of John McCain's dignity and honor that is so pervasive in the minds of many. If Hillary Clinton made anything resembling that statement from McCain, Sullivan would be apoplectic.
McCain consistently wants -- and gets -- to have everything both ways. Of Hagee's words on Katrina as God's punishment to New Orleans for a gay pride parade, McCain says "it's nonsense, it's nonsense, it's nonsense," but McCain's rejection, as it were, was painfully slow in coming and he still sought and remains "glad" to have Hagee's endorsement, and continues to coddle the extreme right wing. Yet McCain has the nerve to attack Obama in the basest possible way for a so-called endorsement by Hamas, as if anyone in America is taking direction from Hamas on the election or that in any way what Hamas says should decide anything. It's extreme Bushist stooping and fear mongering and guilt by non-association, no less vile than the 2004 election propaganda that Al Qaida and Fidel Castro preferred John Kerry.
Even before his recent cave on waterboarding, McCain objected to torture yet supported -- was the "sensible" and all-important mavericky voice defending, in so-called rebellion against the Bush Administration -- the so-called (and still so-called, despite the fact that it's just not so) anti-torture amendment to the defense appropriations bill over a year ago that for all intents and purposes actually legalized torture by, among other things, ensuring no habeas corpus rights for Guantanamo prisoners, allowing evidence obtained through torture to be used, and giving just-following-orders defenses to interrogators, all the while allowing Bush to elect to define torture as he saw fit. McCain gets his moderate bonafides by protesting a U.S. constitutional amendment against gay marriage, to the calculated ire of the right wing and the adoration of the McCain-enthralled media, yet stumps for the anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendment in Arizona. I could go on about his divergent (with himself) views on immigration reform, Roe v. Wade, the confederate flag, and the successes and failures of the Iraq misadventure. These all speak to the character of the man, in what are often unflattering ways, despite their portrayal by his media "base."
But where's the rage about McCain? His response to Hagee's comments is noteworthy, but the broader context, and John McCain's overall character, notwithstanding that he is a genuine hero for what he endured in Vietnam, demands a full assessment, and that picture is not so rosy.
