COLUMN: McCain a threat and a blessing to Democrats
John McCain ever increasingly looks like the inevitable Republican nominee. Only a few months ago, people were writing McCain’s political obituary. But his victories in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida have given his campaign untold momentum.
The most recent Washington Post poll has McCain leading Mitt Romney nationally by 24 points.
This surge in the polls has worried many Democrats. The conventional wisdom is that McCain is the most (no, only) electable Republican candidate. And it’s true that in hypothetical match-ups, McCain fares the best against the Democrats, even narrowly beating Clinton.
I’m actually not all that concerned by a McCain nomination, however. Sure, he’s no Romney, but McCain can be handily defeated too.
With the scrutiny that comes with being the frontrunner, and as voters learn more about McCain, his aura of electability will erode. And what remains is a surprisingly weak candidate.
If elected, McCain would be the oldest president in American history. He is 71 years old now, and it shows. His stump speeches have been painfully lackluster and dull-they display McCain’s exhaustion. At other times, McCain has just seemed confused. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, McCain referred to Vladimir Putin as the president of Germany-no little gaffe, in my opinion.
Then, of course, there’s the concern that McCain will die of old age in office. I know how callous that sounds, but that possibility must be considered. Whomever McCain recruits as his vice president (and I fear it will be Huckabee), will be thrust into the Oval Office. A more likely scenario, however, is that McCain slips into senility like Reagan, ceding power to his advisers and VP.
Voters will also be turned off by McCain’s grating personality. In high school, McCain earned the nicknames “Punk” and “McNasty.” Then, in Naval Academy, McCain received more than 100 demerits for his unruly behavior and graduated fifth from the bottom of hiss class (894th out of 899).
He didn’t shed his testy temperament when he entered the Senate. Sidney Blumenthal, of Salon, wrote McCain is “a volatile man with a hair-trigger temper, who shouted at Sen. Ted Kennedy on the Senate floor to ‘shut up,’ called his fellow Republican senators ‘shithead,’ ‘asshole,’ and joked in 1998 at a Republican fund raiser about the teenage daughter of President Clinton, ‘Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father.”‘
McCain’s temper has already surfaced in this race. In the last couple debates, McCain could scarcely conceal his hate for Romney. This behavior is unbefitting of a presidential candidate.
It is true that McCain is often a maverick among Republicans, sometimes refusing to toe the party line. But will this fact serve him well in the general election? I doubt it. He’s still too conservative to attract most independents and yet not conservative enough to energize his party’s base.
In fact, many conservatives are imploding at the prospects of a McCain nomination. His stances on taxes, torture, immigration and climate change won’t soon be forgiven by many in the Republican Party. Rush Limbaugh has said that McCain would “destroy the Republican Party.” Ann Coulter wasn’t about to be outdone, threatening a few days ago to campaign for Clinton if McCain gets the Republican nod.
While McCain deserves our thanks for giving Limbaugh, Coulter and their ilk the finger, he still has too often caved to the radical right on issues.
McCain was a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to illegal immigrants’ kids who graduate from high school. In 2007, he voted against the bill.
McCain used to support campaign-finance reform. Then, in 2006, he announced his opposition to a major McCain-Feingold provision. Moreover, a recent study by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute and the liberal advocacy group Public Citizen found McCain has “more lobbyists raising funds for his presidential bid than do any of his rivals.”
And when McCain first ran for president in 2000, he famously called evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson “agents of intolerance.” Now, he’s courting their followers.
Apparently, McCain’s “straight-talk express” took a right turn on the road to the White House.
Ironically, the one issue where he has been fairly consistent is the one most liable to sink his campaign: Iraq. McCain served honorably in the Navy and rightly commands authority on military matters, but Americans will nonetheless recoil at his strident defense of the war and occupation. McCain has said U.S. troops could be in Iraq for “a thousand years” or “a million years,” as far as he was concerned. This sentiment won’t sit well with the two-thirds of us who believe the war was a mistake. So take heart, Democrats. McCain may be the best the Republican running, but that, frankly, is not saying much.