Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics (36 page)

In this regard, the media’s mindless praise of McCain as a truth-bound maverick is, as usual, the opposite of reality. In February 2008, the
New Republic
’s Jonathan Chait examined a series of substantial policy reversals by McCain, compared those reversals to the “maverick” praise heaped on him by press consensus, and concluded,

This assessment gets McCain almost totally backward. He has diverged wildly and repeatedly from conservative orthodoxy, but he has also reinvented himself so completely that it has become nearly impossible to figure out what he really believes.

Far from being the man who, like George W. Bush, always says what he believes no matter what the political cost, McCain has shifted positions so frequently—particularly in those areas where he once deviated from GOP dogma—that one can only engage in groundless speculation in order to determine what McCain’s “real beliefs” are, if such a thing can be said to exist. As Chait put it: “Determining how McCain would act as president has thus become a highly sophisticated exercise in figuring out whom he’s misleading and why.” Thus, we once again find that the political press’s personality-based hero worship of a GOP candidate is not only vapid, but the opposite of the candidate’s reality.

The complete contradiction between McCain’s media image and the reality of his behavior as a politician can be seen in virtually every area,
most egregiously
those cited by journalists as proof of his rock-ribbed integrity. McCain long opposed repeal of the estate tax, only to announce after 2004 that he would no longer block its repeal. He originally opposed the Bush tax cuts, only now to campaign on his pledge to make them permanent. He was long the symbol of pro-immigration policy proposals, only to abandon those views and claim that he “learned a lesson” that closed borders must come first—a lesson learned just in time to save his candidacy in the GOP primary.

These reversals of “conviction” were as naked an example of political hypocrisy and pandering as such flip-flopping gets—the exact attribute that McCain’s adoring press fans claim he is incapable of exhibiting. With virtually every one of these reversals, Chait traced the cause to McCain’s post-2004 realization that his only hope for winning the presidency lay in placating the right-wing Republican base and becoming more palatable to them. As Chait documented,

After the Kerry flirtation ended, McCain obviously decided that his only plausible path to the presidency lay with the Republican Party in 2008. So he set about reingratiating himself with the GOP establishment while maintaining his reputation as an unwavering man of principle.

The mirage-like nature of McCain’s alleged convictions can be seen most clearly, and most depressingly, with his public posturing over the issue of torture. Time and again, McCain has made a dramatic showing of standing firm against the use of torture by the United States only to reveal that his so-called principles are confined to the realm of rhetoric and theater, but never action that follows through on that rhetoric.

In 2005, McCain led the effort in the Senate to pass the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), which made the use of torture illegal. While claiming that he had succeeded in passing a categorical ban on torture, however, McCain meekly accepted two White House maneuvers that diluted his legislation to the point of meaningless: (1) the torture ban expressly applied only to the U.S. military, but not to the intelligence community, which was exempt, thus ensuring that the C.I.A.—the principal torture agent for the United States—could continue to torture legally; and (2) after signing the DTA into law, which passed the Senate by a vote of 90–9, President Bush issued one of his first controversial “signing statements” in which he, in essence, declared that, as President, he had the power to disregard even the limited prohibitions on torture imposed by McCain’s law.

McCain never once objected to Bush’s open, explicit defiance of his cherished anti-torture legislation, preferring to bask in the media’s glory while choosing to ignore the fact that his legislative accomplishment would amount to nothing. Put another way, McCain opted for the political rewards of grandstanding on the issue while knowing that he had accomplished little, if anything, in the way of actually promoting his “principles.”

A virtual repeat of that sleight-of-hand occurred in 2006, when McCain first pretended to lead opposition to the Military Commissions Act (MCA), only thereafter to endorse this most radical, torture-enabling legislation, almost single-handedly ensuring its passage. After insisting that compelled adherence to the anti-torture ban of the Geneva Conventions was a non-negotiable item for him, McCain ultimately blessed the MCA despite the fact that it
left it to the President to determine, in his sole discretion, which interrogation methods did or did not comply with the Conventions’ provisions.

Thus, once again, McCain created a self-image as a principled torture opponent with one hand, and with the other, ensured a legal framework that would not merely fail to ban, but would
actively enable,
the President’s ability to continue using interrogation methods widely considered to be torture. Indeed, by casting himself as the Supreme Arbiter of torture morality, McCain’s support for this torture-enabling law became Bush and Cheney’s most potent instrument for legalizing the very interrogation methods that McCain, for so long, flamboyantly claimed to oppose. Such duplicitous behavior is all the more appalling when one considers that McCain’s status as Torture Arbiter was largely grounded in the fact that he himself was tortured while imprisoned, yet he is nonetheless willing to act as compliant dupe, if not active enabler, in legalizing torture by the United States.

The coup de grace in the exposure of McCain as a torture enabler came in February 2008. Senate Democrats—in the face of their knowledge that McCain’s Military Commissions Act allowed the President to continue to use torture techniques, such as waterboarding, and motivated by the refusal of new Bush attorney general Michael Mukasey to declare such practices illegal—introduced legislation that would outlaw waterboarding by
all agencies
of the U.S. government, including the C.I.A., rather than merely outlawing its use by the U.S. military, as McCain’s 2005 DTA had done.

Faced with the clearest test yet of the authenticity of his claimed anti-torture convictions, McCain, as he sought to placate the far-right base of his party, left no doubt that his anti-torture posturing was pure political theater. While the anti-waterboarding law passed the Senate 51–45, McCain voted
against
the waterboarding ban, notwithstanding years of dramatic protests over this interrogation technique. Worse, McCain’s excuse for his vote—that there was no need for the law since waterboarding was already illegal—was a complete falsehood, since discretion for determining the legality of waterboarding continues to rest with the President under the very law, the MCA, that
McCain caused to be enacted in 2006.

If one were to attempt to create a caricature of a Great American Hypocrite, one could do no better than describing John McCain’s behavior on this torture issue, one of his signature maverick positions. After years of self-serving posturing as the moral leader on torture and after basking endlessly in the media reverence that accompanied it, McCain worked behind the scenes on one measure after the next that
enabled and legalized
torture. Then, when faced with as clear-cut a vote as could be imagined, he opposed a law that would have outlawed the very methods that the Bush administration had admitted using and that McCain long insisted constituted torture.

McCain’s media reputation as the honor-bound, integrity-laden man of the people fares no better when one examines his rather turbulent personal life. In 2004, the right-wing slime machine made much of John Kerry’s marriage to a wealthy second wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. The hatemongering swamps on the Right routinely cited his second marriage to label Kerry a “gigolo,” as illustrated by an article published on Free Republic by Taki Theodoracopulos, which spewed,

If John Kerry wins in November, he will be the premiere president of this great country of ours to be also a gigolo. The dictionary defines “gigolo” as a man supported by a woman in return for his sexual attentions and companionship. It might sound rough for John Kerry, but it’s right to the point. Let’s face it. The 44th president (maybe) is as close to a gigolo as I can think of, and I have known many….

Both Kerry and Clinton learned to lie early and often, and have continued the practice because it has served both men very well. When Clinton was elected, I was the first to refer to him not by his name but as the draft-dodger. If Kerry wins the prize, he will be known in this space as the gigolo, or Mr. Flip-Flop. Better yet, the flip-flop gigolo.

World Net Daily
’s Joseph Farah echoed this smear with his article entitled “President Gigolo” that contained gems such as this:

But if there is one characteristic of Kerry’s life that should disqualify him absolutely as a candidate for president, it is the fact that he has sought out millionaire wives to take care of him. Not to put too fine a point on it, he’s a serial gigolo.

Ann Coulter wrote that Kerry “clearly has no experience dealing with problems of typical Americans since he is a cad and a gigolo living in the lap of other men’s money.” Rush Limbaugh repeatedly called Kerry a “gigolo” on his radio program, with comments such as this one: “He’s basically a skirt-chaser, folks. He’s a gigolo.”

Indeed, entering “Kerry” and “gigolo” into Google unearths thousands upon thousands of items from right-wing pundits, blogs, and other assorted appendages of the right-wing edifice mocking Kerry for his second marriage to an extremely wealthy woman and suggesting that his marriage was a reflection of a lack of ethics and even a lack of manlihood.

When John McCain was in Vietnam, his then-wife Carol was raising the couple’s three small children. In 1969, with her husband imprisoned in Vietnam, Carol was in a near-fatal car accident. P.O.W. advocate H. Ross Perot paid for her medical care, but—as the
New York Times
’s Nicholas Kristof described in a 2000 article—“the injuries left her four inches shorter and on crutches, and she had gained a good deal of weight.”

McCain learned of the disfiguring effects of the accident only upon seeing his wife for the first time once he returned to the United States. Quite disabled himself, McCain undertook an intensive rehabilitation regimen, and Carol continued to raise their children and support her husband through his tribulations.

By 1979, it was clear that McCain’s naval career had stalled, and he had no hope of becoming an admiral, as both his father and grandfather were able to achieve. He had considered a political career back in 1976, when he was asked by local party officials to run for Congress, which he almost accepted. With few prospects for future advancement in his military career, McCain in 1979 began seriously contemplating the switch to politics, and at that time, he made severe changes in his personal life.

Despite still being married to his first wife, the mother of his children, McCain began, to use Kristof’s description, “aggressively courting a twenty-five-year-old woman who was as beautiful as she was rich.” That woman, Cindy Hensley, was (and is) the heiress to an enormous beer fortune, is eighteen years younger than McCain (and much younger than McCain’s first wife), and eventually became the second Mrs. John McCain. Kristof described the process by which McCain was able to rid himself of his aging, overweight, mildly disabled first wife in favor of the young, beautiful, and extremely rich new wife, as follows:

Mr. McCain has acknowledged running around with women and accepted responsibility for the breakup of the marriage, without going into details. But his supporters and his biographer, Robert Timberg, all suggest that the marriage had already effectively ended and that the couple had separated by the time he met Cindy, his present wife.

That might be the most soothing way of explaining a politician’s divorce from a disabled wife and his remarriage to a wealthy heiress, but it does not jibe with accounts of family members and friends….

Late that year, the McCains finally separated, and Mrs. McCain accepted a divorce the next February. Mr. McCain promptly married Miss Hensley, his present wife….

Mr. McCain’s three children in the first marriage were less forgiving at first, and none of them were in attendance when he married Cindy. No one blamed Cindy, however, for she seemed shy and it was clear that Mr. McCain had been the pursuer.

“I was certainly disappointed and mad at Dad,” remembered Andy, who said it took almost four years for his anger to evaporate. He added: “I hold him responsible. I don’t hold Cindy responsible a bit.”

Because Cindy’s family was based in Arizona, McCain chose to make that state his home. In 1981, McCain moved to Phoenix and was promptly given a job by Cindy’s wealthy and well-connected father, in a public relations capacity that enabled McCain to travel around the state giving speeches. A year later, McCain announced that he was running for Congress, and his new connection to a well-known, highly-regarded, and lavishly funded Arizona family gave him instant credibility and cache as a candidate. That election launched John McCain’s career as a politician, with Cindy, his second wife, at his side.

If one examines America’s presidential elections beginning in 1980 to the present, what one finds is a consistent and unchanging pattern. The Republican Party dresses up its leaders in all sorts of virtuous personality costumes. The establishment press, driven by the vapid dynamics of high school personality complexes, digests and then promotes that iconography. National elections are dominated by personality imagery and smears and are almost completely bereft of consideration of substantive issues. Worst of all, the personality images that dictate our election outcomes are not just petty, but entirely false, grounded in pure myth.