Tuesday, February 7th, 2006...11:38 am
News Flash: McCain Can Be a Vindictive Jerk
Once again, John McCain has shown the bad side of himself and the national media is shocked, shocked, that he can be so vindictive.
Senator Barack Obama committed a horrible faux pas: he wrote a courteous letter to Senator McCain, saying that he had some differences with him. McCain then responded with a snide (and public) letter belittling Obama’s lack of Senate experience, and at one point accuses him of “disingenuosness.” That is a just another way of calling him a liar, isn’t it?
McCain has gotten away with this sort of thing for years. That doesn’t stop the national media from loving the guy. Maybe this is a side he doesn’t show to back slapping Washington reporters, or maybe they are cowed by his war record. I have been frustrated for some time with the kid gloves treatment the guy gets from national political reporters, and even from some liberal activists.
The guy has a record of being incredibly vindictive, though. Even when I was sixteen I saw it, when I was working as a volunteer for the campaign of Richard Kimball, the Democrat that ran against McCain. Heck, we were going to lose and lose badly, but that didn’t stop the idiot stunts, culminating in the bouquet of black roses that we recieved at campaign headquarters on election night.
He has been known to intimidate reporters. The most severe example is that of Amy Silverman, a reporter for the New Times who wrote a series of less than lauditory articles about him. McCain went so far as to try to intimidate Silverman’s father, who worked for the federally regulated Salt River Project.
When the Arizona Republic published an editorial about this and other incidents with the local press during the 2000 race, Chris Matthews invited McCain on his show and said, “These people in Arizona don’t know you the way we do…” Yes Chris, you beltway people are far more qualified to talk about the Senator than his constituents.
Despite his reputation as a moderate reformer, he has stuck with some of the most retrograde actors in Arizona’s politics, such as the faux-veteran Duke Tully, convicted felon Fife Symington and lobbyist’s best pal Jeff Groscost. Republican elected officials who strayed from the reservation would be punished. Sandra Dowling’s son, for example, mysteriously didn’t get his expected appointment to the US Navy Academy after she endorsed a primary opponent of McCain’s pal Symington.
Will this lead to the national media reconsidering McCain? The guy, after all, wants to be president. It might be important to look into this stuff.
7 Comments
February 7th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Wasn’t McCain one of the Keating Five? He sure gets a pass from the press on that one. Did he support campaign finance reform just to immunize himself on the corruption issue when he runs for president?
February 7th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Keating Five? Yeah…he was also the one who never gave the money back. Keating’s wife said in an interview, “With McCain, it was take, take, take…”
Of course, that is old news…but it’s still current if you are a Republican trashing DeConcini when he gets appointed to the Board of Regents.
February 7th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Black roses? What a dick.
My mom always is telling me that actions speak louder then words but I can see that is not with politics.
February 7th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
i am torn. love the sarcasm, but wish it were directed elsewhere. were it directed toward virtually any other senator, i would have laughed out loud.
obama had a great comeback letter. makes mccain look even smaller.
February 7th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
I like that McCain will speak independently on some things, but after seeing the way he played lapdog to Bush during the 2004 election, allowing himself to be hugged and physically demeaned/used by Bush [whose treatment of McCain during the 2000 primary in South Carolina was despicable], I think that he wants the 2008 presidency SO BAHHHHHHHD, that he will do ANYTHING to win that Republican primary. Such a man as that, I don’t trust.
February 7th, 2006 at 11:55 pm
cc -
I agree with the worry about how much McCain wants the presidency - it’s scary.
It actually worries me more than his temper (which worries me a LOT!) His letter to Obama, while a work of art to those of us who appreciate the finer uses of sarcasm, was a totally inappropriate response to Sen. Obama’s letter.
While John McCain has some good qualities, in terms of temperment, he seems to be totally unsuited for the presidency.
February 8th, 2006 at 12:18 am
Ted:
The media? Jump on McCain for being vindictive? Dream on. Look at how many people the Bush administration has punished over the years (and the only one the media has covered much has been Valerie Plame, because they were forced to.) They don’t care.
anonymous and cc burro:
Exactly. Every action he takes, every word he says, has to be considered in the context of his run for the Presidency. My guess though is that he will fail. The Republican activists don’t trust him, and his making a Faustian deal with Rove to support Bush (the ‘black baby’ smear in SC long forgotten, I guess) won’t help him. Rove is 1) more Machiavellian than McCain, 2) won’t/can’t hand him the nomination in 2008, and 3) will only back McCain if the polls show things leaning so far to the left that the conservatives figure it will be their chance to run a ‘moderate,’ watch him get squashed to bug goo, and then come back and claim that they need a ‘principled conservative.’ But if they think they have a chance to win, watch the right wing drop McCain like, well, yesterday’s news.