Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, John McCain ran a very different kind of campaign. Take a look.
Recently in McCain Category
Here's what Teddy Roosevelt had to say about it, in his famous "New Nationalism" speech of 1910.
No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar's worth of service rendered--not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective--a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.And John McCain calls himself a Teddy Roosevelt Republican?
The Democratic National Committee has wasted little time putting together an attack ad on McCain and gambling. Brody thinks it could work with evangelicals, and on such matters his opinion is worth paying attention to. I have my doubts though. While It's generally believed that reports on George W. Bush's drunk driving hurt him with evangelicals in 2000, McCain is a much better known quantity, and most evangelicals have already made up their minds who they're voting for. But as always in a close election, a percentage point here or there in a swing state can make a big difference.
OK, the touchstone of the narrative of John McCain and the religious right is his angry denunciation, following the 2000 South Carolina primary, of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance." But now, thanks to Jo Becker and Don Van Natta Jr.'s fascinating investigative piece on John McCain and the gambling industry in today's NYT, we learn the sequel--and something more about the underworld of Republican inside politics in the Bush-Delay years.
As anyone who has followed the Abramoff scandal even slightly knows, the Great Game had to do with playing one Indian tribe off against another. Tribes that wanted gaming licenses hired lobbyists to get them in, while other tribes, feeling their business threatened, hired lobbyists to keep them out. From the moral values standpoint, a politician could claim to be opposing gaming interests even as he was taking money to protect gaming interests. Sweet.
Now it seems--and truth to tell, the Times has the goods--that McCain has been playing his own version of the Great Game. As chairman of the key Senate committee, he learned what the Abramoff gang was up to from those it had ganged up on, and quickly adopted the stance of Senate Savonarola, investigating the corruption (I'm shocked, shocked!) even unto its innermost parts. And then, having gotten mad, came the chance to get really, really even.
That's because it turned out that right in the middle of the hanky-panky were Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, paladins of the religious right and the guys who put the smear on him in South Carolina.
“It was like hitting pay dirt,” said one associate of Mr. McCain’s who had consulted with the senator’s office on the investigation. “And face it — McCain and Weaver [John Weaver, McCain's chief political strategist] were maniacal about Ralph Reed and Norquist. They were sticking little pins in dolls because those guys had cost him South Carolina.”Neither Norquist nor Reed was ever indicted for anything, and Norquist has more or less been able to skate away. But Reed had decided on a career in electoral politics for himself, and in 2006 was running for the GOP nomination to be lieutenant governor of Georgia. Thanks to the revelations, he had to kiss that sucker goodbye.
It now becomes clearer why the McCain campaign went so hysterically after the Times last week. The necessary response calls were being made, and the campaign knew what was coming down the pike. The last thing it needs is for the country to take another close look under the Abramoff rock, not with the Maverick as one of the creatures crawling around.
Former Redskins coach Joe Gibbs: "I believe that electing John McCain and Sarah Palin will spark a return to God's Word and a spiritual revival that will bring our nation together." This strikes me as one of remoter possibilities of the next four years.
Premillennialists tend to give Jews the willies, but if there's anyone who drives them round the bend, it's Jews for Jesus, aka Messianic Jews. And as for the evangelicals who lionize these traitorous fifth columnists (so to speak), they are deeply distrusted and roundly condemned. So it's not really a good thing for the McCain campaign's Jewish outreach that his new ticket-mate was on hand when her church threw a little fete for David Brickner, executive director of Jews for Jesus, which her pastor called "a ministry that is out on the leading edge in a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism.” John Hagee, whatever else you might say about him, is on the opposite end of the evangelical spectrum when it comes to converting the Jews. Where does that leave Sarah Palin? Saying that she doesn't share Brickner's view that violence against Israelis is God's punishment for failing to accept Jesus. Well, that's good to hear.
Andrew Sullivan's on the case, giving the Jewish establishment hell for failing to express its usual distress at such manifestations; so far as he's concerned, it's curtains for McCain in Florida. In a less partisan mode, the Jewish Week runs the traps and finds that the Palin nomination is indeed a big McCain problem. My sense is that that's true not because of anything it says to Jews about McCain's own views but because 1) it's evidence that the GOP is still the party of Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson; and 2) it means there will be One of Them in the Oval Office should the old guy be gathered unto his fathers before his term is run. Revised prediction on the Jewish vote in November: Obama, 70 percent; McCain, 28 percent, Nader 2 percent.
Turns out the choice of Sarah Palin was not so courageous after all. According to today's NYT report by Elisabeth Bumiller, McCain really wanted to go with one of his old pro-choice buddies, Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge, but then had to go eyeball-to-eyeball with James Dobson & Co. and blinked. It is tempting to see this as of a piece with other McCain performances: opposition to Bush taxes until the time comes to let them expire; opposition to torture until the time comes to carve out a loophole for the CIA. So faced with the threat of a floor fight, Bold John buckled: Agents of Intolerance 1, McCain 0. Or so I'd argue if I happened to be a partisan Democrat.
In all fairness, however, and contrary to the latest narratives, the fundamentals of American partisan politics remain pretty much as they gelled in the 1990s. White evangelicals are still the sine qua non Republican grassroots constituency. Even if you're John McCain, you don't mess with the Dobson. And that means sticking with an unreconstructed values agenda. Write all the stories you want about Rich Cizik and climate change, third-world debt, and AIDS in Africa. Globaloney! At the end of the day what counts is using abortion and the gay lifestyle and sex ed and evolution to draw a bright line between us and them.
From the standpoint of evangelical activism, Sarah Palin represents--or seemed to--the the next step in a rich tradition of female leadership, beginning with Anita Bryant in the 1970s and extending to Phyllis Schafly, Beverly LaHaye, and Roberta Combs, to name a few. Like the women volunteers who have kept Protestant churches going for a century and a half, activist women have been the crucial cogs in the GOP's evangelical machine. When push comes to shove, even a maverick among men like John McCain knows he can't do without them. Yes, Dear.
In a phone call with 40 Chabad rabbis from around the country, John McCain asks for their support by emphasizing that he will "put my country first. And I want to promise you that. I will put my country first." That's in contrast to Obama? Then McCain assures them, "I will do everything in my power to make sure that the United States of America and our closest friend and ally remain secure and peaceful and prosperous." America first. Israel a close second.
Update: I wonder if it's inappropriate to contextualize this phone call by noting the combined criticism of the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, by Iowa governor Chet Culver and Barack Obama. Agri, which has been working hard to clean up, and to be seen to have cleaned up, its act since the immigration raid earlier this summer, has been the dominant purveyor of kosher meat in America and is owned by a Chabad family. Not that either Culver or Obama made so much as the slightest mention of the Jewish dimension of this story. But it is roiling the American Jewish world, in which Chabad is both loved and loathed. Will Postville turn into another front in the partisan religion wars?
One more thing from Saddleback. In the first segment of each interview, Warren asked for an example where the candidate had provided leadership against his party's interest, and even his own best interest, for the good of the country. Obama cited ethics and campaign finance reform, tipping his hat to his opponent for being out in front on that as well. But did McCain mention this signature issue of his? He did not. Quickly citing "climate change, out-of-control spending, torture," he went on to tell how as a freshly minted senator he had made so bold as to oppose Ronald Reagan on the invasion of Lebanon. Now there's an issue that won't come up to bite him this year.
But for those who have been paying attention, nothing about McCain has stuck in the craw of the leaders of the religious right more than McCain-Feingold, the landmark campaign finance law significant parts of which McCain's favorite Supreme Court justices have successfully struck down. For him, it's become The Great Unmentionable.
