"Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"-Army Counsel Joseph Welch addressing Sen. Joseph McCarthy
at McCarthy’s infamous "Red Baiting" Senate hearings of the 1950’s
"Words mean things."- Rush Limbaugh
I was 16 in November, 1960 when my father took me to see President Eisenhower dedicate the then new bridge from Red Wing, Minnesota to Wisconsin . It was the time of my first exposure to a President of the United States and it made an impression of momentousness that has stayed with me. It was also my first exposure to a personal sense of respect for a President. Those were times when a President commanded not just respect for the office, but personal respect and, of course for Eisenhower, a genuine war hero, it was a given akin to reverence.
Today, my sons are successful military officers but if they were still young, I would not take them to see our current President for whom I have no personal respect. He has disgraced our Presidency. The office itself has been corrupted, along with our economy, our moral high ground in the world, our governing priorities, and almost our Constitution. The kind of respect and sense of honor my father could feel and demonstrate to me, those characteristics that hold us together as a coherent society, have been deeply, though thankfully not yet mortally wounded. That loss of respect for our leaders has predictably trickled down into the fabric of our daily lives, toward others as seen and heard in the reactions of some in McCain/Palin rallies.
And now we are presented with a man who, despite the fact that he has been a part of that corruption, a man who has subjected us to the most incoherent and blatantly dishonorable presidential campaign in our history (which takes some doing after Bush/Rove), wants us to give him that office. John McCain wants to be President and his campaign leaders have said openly that they don’t care how he gets there, the implication being that we should just never mind it either. Never mind his obvious cynicism, bellicosity, Orwellian doublespeak, and outright proven lies that even the media has had enough of. Never mind the sarcasm, fear mongering, belligerence toward other nations and what that portends to his approach to foreign policy, our national safety and treasure.....and the lives of our military personnel. Never mind his hypocrisy and the reeking hypocrisy of the Religious Right about social issues as he caved to the religious base of his party with a fundamentalist anti-gay choice for his Vice President while he retains his gay Chief of Staff, Mark Buse who, if McCain is elected, would presumably become the first gay White House Chief of Staff (that I know of)by virtue of his own hypocrisy (not an anti-gay slur, being gay myself). Yes, the mainstream press isn’t touching it, but it’s thoroughly documented in the gay media. Never mind his and Palin’s barely veiled threat of war with Iran at which they apparently would "not blink". Never mind that he was one of the chorus of political financial deregulators who is now singing a different tune about the need for regulation (perhaps Cindy’s fortune is threatened?). Never mind that Rove and the Rovian political philosophy that gave us Bush and war, Constitutional disrespect and now economic collapse is advising his campaign and Sarah Palin. Never mind that the fanatical Religious Right is salivating at the chance to grab the full power of the Presidency through Sarah Palin, setting us on a path toward a fascist theocracy. Never mind that, as Sinclair Lewis wrote, "When fascism comes to America , it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross." Never mind McCain’s shoot from the hip impulsiveness in foreign affairs as so glaringly displayed in his politically-expedient-getting-out-in-front-of-the-President reactions to the Russia/Georgia fiasco. And never mind that his campaign is run by lobbyists while he rants disingenuously about the corruption of our political process by special interests. Never mind his age and health which, if you think about it (you have thought about it, yes?), we know next to nothing about. McCain can’t tie his own shoes thus, I suppose, the ($520) loafers. He can’t use a keyboard for any length of time or comb his own hair because of his war injuries (no derision intended). Those are physical constraints actually quite superficial to his ability to be President. But he suffers from melanoma, a deadly cancer that can and usually does strike without warning.
What else may there be that we don’t know, as if that wasn’t enough? Are his lapses and gaffes and the occasional momentary, easy-to-miss appearances that he’s trying to think of something an indicator of early stages of dementia? What kind of implication for our future is the very real possibility that Sarah Palin, a religious fundamentalist who, on video, had words of praise for a cultic African witch hunter; that a woman immersed in "spiritual warfare" religious programming with a personal stake in the realization of Armegeddon and apocalyptic Biblical prophecy credibility, may be the one who will nominate the new Supreme Court Justices and have control of our nuculer (she can't pronounce it either!!) arsenal? Never mind all that folks. John McCain’s a "war hero" and would never do us wrong. Right? (Apologies to General/President Eisenhower who actually did know how to win a war and had to bear a more horrible life and death burden that McCain can imagine)
McCain once said of himself, "Often my haste is a mistake but I live with the consequences". Wrong, Senator! He could not be more wrong. He is not a private citizen. He is a Senator who wants to be President. It is we, the American people who must live with his mistakes, just as we do now with President Bush’s appalling, willfully ignorant incompetence. My sons and three granddaughters will be living with and paying for those "mistakes". Well, that’s water over the dam and Senator McCain, who helped overfill the reservoir, is asking us to trust him. How do I trust a presidential candidate who professes "country first" and then caves to the fanatical wing of his party with a VP choice he met, very briefly, only once and whom McCain himself apparently doesn’t trust enough to leave alone with the media and has to run her through a "speed dating" stint of quick photo ops at the U.N. to get foreign policy "credentials"? How do I trust a presidential candidate who, given his age and one well known health risk, won’t release his health records to the public? How do I trust a presidential candidate who either didn’t know the identity of or deliberately insulted the Prime Minister of a NATO member ( Spain ) and war ally in Afghanistan ? How can I trust a presidential candidate who appears to embrace a decision making process defined by impetuousness, recklessness and gut instinct over facts and careful analysis? How can I trust a presidential candidate who lies blatantly to my face (and shows it by blinking too much when he does it) but wouldn’t blink at a pre-emptive strike at Iran ? Senator, I would hope you would do a great deal of blinking in such circumstances!!
I have had enough of McCain’s (and Palin’s) mendacity, cynicism, misguided ambition and lies to scare the bejesus out of me (pun on Palin intended). I’ll wrap it up with this spot-on observation from journalist David Ignatius in the Washington Post. "In May 2006, after McCain had courted the Rev. Jerry Falwell in an effort to win conservative support, I asked him if he was bending his principles for the sake of winning. ‘I don’t want it that badly,’ "McCain answered." ‘I will continue to do what is right...if that means I can’t get the Republican nomination, fine. I’ve had a happy life. The worst thing I can do is sell my soul to the devil.’"
‘Nuf said.