The prevailing political winds are far from blowing John McCain's way in 2008. To begin with, his party goes over with the majority of people about as well as when Andy Dick tried to grope a hostess at a Chili's. After 8 years of Bush incompetence, the electorate seemingly is resigned to mobilize against the GOP brand. Obviously this is highly detrimental to McCain's candidacy for President. In addition, he has hardly helped himself for the balance of the campaign to date. From his painfully awkward speech behind the lime green banner to admitting his lack of knowledge on the economy to just today making reference to the nonexistent border between Pakistan and Iraq.
To rebut both the negative ambiance towards Republicans and his demonstrable foibles as a candidate, John McCain has proffered an image as a politician whose "experience" is second to none, and that this trait is indispensable to one's success in the Oval Office. Absent any discernible positives in the areas of economic acumen, or a cogent energy policy, McCain has spent the better part of his campaign emphasizing both the existence of his "experience" and thereafter, the said relevance of this trait to being President.
On McCain's official website, the first sentence of his biography emphasizes that " John McCain has a remarkable record of leadership and experience that embodies his unwavering lifetime commitment to service. " One of his flagship slogans is "Experience to Lead." In the incipient weeks of his campaign, McCain was already promising that he had "experience to solve the big problems." As that quote shows, McCain was couching his run in the rhetoric of experience, even before the sub prime mortgage meltdown, and his phlegmatic response to it sullied his reputation on the economy even further. One editorial writer gushed that "vast experience, service of country define McCain." In fact, the notion of experience has been integral to the legitimacy of McCain's bid since he announced.
When in attack mode the notion of the pertinence of "experience" has been espoused ad nauseum by the senior Senator from Arizona. McCain just today disparaged Obama's credentials because he is someone "without any military experience whatsoever." Bereft of any other means of legitimate attack, McCain has ridden the "Experience" Express hard on his Presidential opponent.
At the center of McCain's narrative is his harrowing tenure as a POW imprisoned in the Hanoi Hilton for five years, and his subsequent decision to serve two decades plus in Congress. According to the McCain camp, these are the locations in which one can procure relevant amounts of "experience", as opposed to the areas in which Obama spent his formative years; the streets of the South Side of Chicago.
By in large, the pliant main stream media has heretofore bought both the assertion that McCain has "experience" and that it is relevant to the qualifications for Commander in Chief uncritically. In fact, it's almost as if they have been bending over backwards not to abnegate the rhetoric from McCain and his surrogates. Theresa Heinz Kerry was criticized for not releasing her tax returns in 2004; Cindy McCain releases a pathetic shell of her own, and not a peep from David Broder, Thomas L. Friedman or any of their ilk. Even overtly liberal rags like The New Republic fawn over McCain's "decades of experience" like a mother over an injured child.
More over, not only do McCain's claims go completely unchallenged in the media, but anyone offering an alternative interpretation of his credentials is wholly and summarily castigated. Case in point would be of course Gen. Wesley Clark (he who knows a few things about being in the battlefield after his stint as NATO Supreme Allied Commander) who, after having the gall to question the link between serving as a pilot, and then a POW in the Vietnam theatre and the utmost resume for President, was treated as a pariah by the majority of the major news outlets. Clark was inveighed against with such fury that it almost seemed like he had the gall to assert that the United States should not support Israel unequivocally, without respect to our own interests. It was that bad! (/sarcasm)
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The sad part about the media conveniently deciding to let McCain present his narrative without vetting is that they are forgetting to see how void of meaning McCain's assertion of "experience" actually is. Implicit in McCain's self-appraisal as a man of the utmost "experience" is the idea that this experience has taught him the principles of sound judgment and reasoning. Without having gleaned a superior ability to think out difficult ideas, and then apply the pertinent remedy, "experience" is simply a sobriquet that conjures no significance whatsoever.
There can be no doubt that John McCain has spent many years on this planet (the guy has a scare the length of my middle finger that frames the right side of his face), has visited many countries (his favorite recent sojourn was reportedly the one to Czechoslovakia), and has served on many committees in the Senate. It would thus seem that McCain really has a breadth of knowledge and a cerebral, nuanced view on the world, given his expansive history.
However, in analyzing McCain's record, particularly his ruinous conduct vis a vis the Iraq war, blatantly illustrates how very little sound judgment McCain has absorbed from his many "valuable" years in public life that supposedly "define him." From his highly dubious actions in the Keating 5 scandal to the decision to totally reverse himself, and therefore abdicate his principles, on both Bush's tax cuts and the immigration legislation that he co-sponsored, McCain has exhibited a consistent propensity towards foul judgment.
His reprehensible conduct on Iraq however, is probably the most enlightening, and also, damning instance of McCain's utter dearth of judgment. McCain's lack of judgment on the correct course in Iraq is such because he had the most relevant experience in his background, Vietnam, that should have compelled him to take the exact opposite course that he ultimately took. As the New York Times Magazine reported recently, John McCain did a comprehensive retrospective of the war, and he nevertheless continues to conclude that the war in Vietnam could have won had the media caused the morale and will of the public to dissipate. McCain had the foremost opportunity to be introspective and critical; he instead chose to perpetuate a nearly implausible conclusion about the pivotal conflict in his life.
If this stupefying and inane conclusion didn't offer an ominous harbinger of McCain's inability to deduce the obvious lessons of the Vietnam war, then his conduct per Iraq hopefully cements into every voter's consciousness that John McCain's claim to "experience" is wholly barren and meaningless. From his pronouncements at the outset that "As long as Saddam Hussein is in power, I am convinced that he will pose a threat to our security" to his laughable public relations trip (with bulletproof vest in tow) to illuminate the "gains" of the surge, John McCain has consistently been on the wrong side of facts and reason when it came to the situation in Iraq.
McCain's claque will claim disingenuously that "we are winning" (whatever the hell that means) and try to rationalize McCain's past failures on Iraq as a way of obfuscating how threatening the entire Iraq war has been to McCain's archetype of a man whose experience is somehow an indicator of sound judgment. No matter how hard they try, McCain's statements on Iraq will never die, and will instead remain a damning indictment en perpetuity against his utter absence of judgment .
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Exposing the fallacious argument that McCain has the requisite judgment and critical thinking skills endemic to a successful Presidency is the next line of attack that Barack Obama must take. Though the media will collude and rabble rouse, as they did with General Clark's statements, in a concerted effort to vitiate any serious discussion about McCain's qualifications, Barack Obama must appeal to the facts, particularly the connection between McCain's arcane, unsupported views on Vietnam and his subsequent audacious failures on Iraq. If Obama can successfully elucidate the connection between those two wars, and they way they expose how little McCain has learned from his "experience", the facade will hopefully fall soon thereafter.
Exorbitant gas prices has left a lot of us with little left in our tanks. Figuratively speaking, John McCain, as a Republican coming off the heels of the Bush debacle, as a man whose knowledge of the economy rivals that of Freddie Muniz (no harm intended, Freddie), has perilously little left in his tank with which to build a campaign around. His last bastion is his concocted claim of superior "experience" and the positive attributes therein associated with it.
It's time for Americans to have a minor Rip Van Winkle moment, and wake up to realize that McCain's guise of experience is as empty as the market that the latter "toured" when he found out "how much progress" had been achieved in Iraq.
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