The Search for an American President -- Case Study: John McCain

The 2008 presidential election is -- whether you're ready for it or not -- in full swing. And, with no incumbent president or vice president-running-for-president in the field, the list of potential nominees for both parties is littered with candidates ranging from household names, to names that might not even be recognized in their home states.

It is a great time for politics.

While it is true that all politics are local, and the actions of your local mayor often have a bigger impact in your life than those of a president, there is no office in the world with which we entrust our hopes and dreams more than that of the presidency.

We want presidents to show us big challenges and define bigger answers. We want presidents who believe in us more than we believe in ourselves. We want presidents who embody the very best of who we are as Americans, not our very worst. We want presidents whom we know will leave the world a little bit better for our children simply because we found it in ourselves to trust in them and their vision for America.

And it is because the presidency carries with it such a spiritual connection with who we are as a people that we can and should take the time to put any candidate for that office through the wringer.

Presidential candidates should be forced to prove to us that they care about our families as much as we do; that they understand what it means to not have health care; that they know how our energy consumption patterns are at odds with the scarcity of fossil fuels; that they too can relate to the fear of going to work one day, not knowing if the forces of globalization will force you to look for new employment the next.

This is what we can and should get to know about our candidates -- that they "get" us, and, in turn, that we "get" them. Not that we always have to agree with them, but that at the end of the day we want to know that they are pushing this country in a direction that we understand to be good, just, and fair.

That's what we should be evaluating. But we aren't.

Instead we (the media/public) are lurking in a murky, ethical abyss -- a place where we don't know where to draw the line, and as a result end up obliterating any chance we have of actually getting to know our would-be presidents as people.

The problem now is that candidates think they are doing us a favor (or at least doing what they think is necessary to attain 270 electoral votes) by attempting to appeal to our schizophrenic evaluation criteria -- criteria that in their present form are completely unable to separate the sexual weaknesses of a person from the responsibilities of the office; or the errors of youth from disqualifying errors of judgement; or the evolution of one's voting record, from election year flip-flopping.

And what do we get because of our failure as a citizenry to be critical, impartial, human, and fair? Over-programmed, cookie cutter candidates, who at one time might have been able to inspire us with their realism, but now bore use with catch phrases and jargon. We get empty vessels; completely unable to arrive at an opinion until it has been focus grouped and validated in each of the early primary states by the candidate's Frank Luntz-of-the-moment pollster.

We get watered drown drivel.

We get John McCain 2007 vs. John McCain 2000.

And it is in this fact that we see the true heartbreak of modern American politics.

John McCain in the 2000 presidential primary was a son-of-a-gun who told us what we needed to know, not what we wanted to hear. He was Mr. Straight Talk, and that wasn't a campaign creation -- it was true.

McCain 2000 rode into each town on the Straight Talk Express bus, the closest thing any modern campaign has had to a "no-spin zone," delivering real answers that won him the title of media darling and ogling from 20-something buzz-maker The Daily Show.

Fast forward seven years, and we have a stiff McCain appearing on Meet the Press. We have a McCain who is hob-nobbing with the same folks that he called out during his first presidential run. We have a McCain who is...well, the very opposite of the guy who became a favorite amongst moderates, college students, and the politically weary.

Vanity Fair magazine traveled with McCain and reported on what can -- in the eye of one searching for authenticity -- only be read as the devolution of the candidate.

Vanity Fair, February '07 issue, page 3 of online article:

But the plain truth is that the Straight Talk Express, Version 2.008, is often a far cry from the Magic Bus of 2000.

"Let me give you a little straight talk," McCain tells the crowd at a house-party fund-raiser in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for Senator John Thune, the Christian conservative and self-styled "servant leader" who defeated the Senate's Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, in 2004. The minute Thune was elected, McCain says, he became an important figure in the Republican Party and the Senate.

That's not straight talk. That's partisan pap. Nor, presumably, was it straight talk last summer at an Aspen Institute discussion when McCain struggled to articulate his position on the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. At first, according to two people who were present, McCain said he believed that intelligent design, which proponents portray as a more intellectually respectable version of biblical creationism, should be taught in science classes. But then, in the face of intense skepticism from his listeners, he kept modifying his views—going into reverse evolution.

"Yes, he's a social conservative, but his heart isn't in this stuff," one former aide told me, referring to McCain's instinctual unwillingness to impose on others his personal views about issues such as religion, sexuality, and abortion. "But he has to pretend [that it is], and he's not a good enough actor to pull it off. He just can't fake it well enough."

When it comes to the rough-and-tumble of practical politics, as opposed to battles over political principle, McCain's apparent compromises are just as striking. Six years ago, McCain was livid when Sam and Charles Wyly, a pair of Texas businessmen friendly with the Bush campaign, spent $2.5 million on a nominally independent advertising effort attacking McCain. He called them "Wyly coyotes," and implored an audience in Boston to "tell them to keep their dirty money in the state of Texas." This time, McCain accepted money from the Wylys. The Wylys gave McCain's Straight Talk America political-action committee at least $20,000, and together with other family members and friends they chaired a Dallas fund-raiser for the pac. (The Wyly money was later returned because the brothers have become the subject of a federal investigation.) In 2000, McCain denounced the Reverend Jerry Falwell—and others like him—as "agents of intolerance." Last spring McCain gave the commencement address at Falwell's Liberty University.

Two years ago, McCain was unsparing in his criticism of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who slimed his friend and fellow Vietnam veteran John Kerry. Kerry felt close enough to McCain at the time to make multiple and serious inquiries about McCain's interest in running for vice president on a national-unity ticket (and McCain basked in the courtship, even if he knew nothing could ever come of it). So the alacrity with which McCain joined in demanding an apology from Kerry—whose "botched joke" last fall about George Bush's intellect came out as a slur against American troops in Iraq—was surprising, if not unseemly. Once upon a time, the two friends would have talked about the issue privately, and McCain might well have given Kerry his frank advice. As of mid-November, they had not spoken since McCain's statement condemning Kerry's "insensitive, ill-considered, and uninformed remarks"—which McCain once again read from a piece of paper, by the way. When I asked McCain if he thought Kerry was really trying to insult the troops, he answered only indirectly, and with some annoyance: "I accepted it when he said, 'I botched a joke,' O.K.?"

At its core, the appeal of the "straight talk" is that we feel like we don't have to scrutinize and parse every word the candidate says.

That McCain has gone away, and we are left with a McCain that is rebranding himself to better appeal to his target demographic, the wealthy Republican mega-donor. Lost in this transition (from the sounds of this) is the call-it-as-I-see-it McCain, leaving us with the one who is willing to distance himself from his friend John Kerry for a shot at the Oval Office.

Strategically all of these moves are defensible, but the "gut" that McCain once played so well to now finds itself queasy and upset by his attempts to reach out to the grassroots of the Republican party -- an apparatus that certainly wasn't reaching out to him in 2000.

Vanity Fair, page 4 of online article:

The battle between Bush and McCain in 2000 was bitter, with Bush supporters in South Carolina spreading rumors that McCain was insane and that he had fathered a black child. (McCain and his wife, Cindy, are the adoptive parents of a girl from Bangladesh.) Bush and McCain traded insults involving each other's moral standing. A year later, with bad feeling still so high that strategist John Weaver had been virtually blackballed from working in Republican politics, Weaver went so far as to sound out Democratic Senate leaders about the possibility of having McCain caucus with them. This would have put the Senate, then divided 50–50, into Democratic control. Aides to two senior Senate Democrats say it was never clear how serious McCain himself was about the proposal, and any possibility that it might actually happen was short-circuited when another Republican, James Jeffords, of Vermont, made the move first, in 2001.

That was then, when memories of the Bush camp's gruesome, dishonest attacks on McCain were still fresh. When I asked McCain how a rapprochement with Bush could ever have been achieved, he began by saying, "For 10 days I wallowed," then made it clear that the best balm was his realization that the campaign had raised his stature. "We came out of the campaign, even though losing, enhanced nationally, with a lot of opportunities in the Senate legislatively, with more influence, and eventually, if necessary, to be able to go at it again." Whatever the psychic or political specifics, the ultimate result was the celebrated McCain-Bush campaign hug of 2004, in which McCain found himself enveloped in a back-wrapping embrace and upside-the-head smooch. Since that moment McCain has borrowed from the Bush political playbook, aiming to make himself the prohibitive front-runner for the 2008 primaries, and happily snapping up former Bush aides and supporters from key states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, including Terry Nelson, an Iowan and political director of the 2004 Bush campaign. Nelson, now a private consultant in Washington, approved the most widely condemned negative ad of the 2006 midterms, produced by a quasi-independent group financed by the Republican National Committee and aimed at the black Democratic Senate candidate in Tennessee, Harold Ford Jr. In the ad, a sultry white actress says she had once met Mr. Ford at a "Playboy party," then cradles her outstretched thumb and little finger to her ear and coos, "Harold, call me." After the ad sparked an uproar it was taken off the air. Given the racially charged campaign of innuendo deployed against McCain by Bush supporters six years ago, and McCain's outrage at such tactics, the McCain camp's failure to condemn Nelson or the ad struck many as surprising. All John Weaver managed to say at the time was "We're pleased the ad has been pulled down." Nelson is set to manage McCain's '08 campaign.

The question the observer searching for the authentic individual must ask is, "why?"

John McCain is a genuine war hero -- one whose credentials and love of country should be unquestionable. Why the need to mess with the straight talk chemistry and begin beefing up his campaign staff with Bush ex-patriots?

McCain 2000 was an attractive tale because he was the underdog -- the guy who you root for in the sitcom to get the girl instead of the GQ-esque main character. Oddly McCain, without the GQ looks, now finds himself cast as the main character. To date, his performance has been a bit like watching a TV spin-off. You remember you liked Joey on Friends, and he's the same guy, but something just isn't adding up when he's on his own show -- that's McCain 2008.

What remains to be seen in McCain 2008 is whether it is possible to let people on to the Straight Talk Express bus without ruining its essence.

Vanity Fair, page 10 of online article:

At the freshman convocation at Boston College this fall, McCain concluded his talk with a powerful warning about the costs of compromising one's highest ideals.

"Very far from here and long ago, I served with men of extraordinary character, honorable men, strong, principled, wise, compassionate, and loving men," McCain told the students. "Better men than I, in more ways than I can number.… Some of them were beaten terribly, and worse. Some were killed.… Most often, they were tortured to compel them to make statements criticizing our country and the cause we had been asked to serve. Many times, their captors would briefly suspend the torture and try to persuade them to make a statement by promising that no one would hear what they said, or know that they had sacrificed their convictions. Just say it and we will spare you any more pain, they promised, and no one, no one, will know. But the men I had the honor of serving with always had the same response, 'I will know. I will know.'

"I wish that you always hear the voice in your own heart, when you face hard decisions in your life, to hear it say to you, again and again, until it drowns out every other thought: 'I will know. I will know. I will know.'"

McCain's own compromises in pursuit of the presidency may be necessary, even justified. And they may, in fact, pave his way to victory in the Republican primaries, and perhaps to the White House itself. But even if no one calls him out, and the public plays along, McCain may pay an awful price. Because, whatever happens, he will know. He will know. He will know.

The doors to the bus have opened to many of the very same people the Straight Talk Express was running down just seven years ago.

What we deserve to know is whether the real John McCain got off the bus during one of those stops.