George Will Unimpressed With McCain

[Tom Wetmore]

McCain Loses His Head

By George F. Will

Tuesday, September 23, 2008; A21

"The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said without even looking around."

-- "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

To read the Journal's details about the depths of McCain's shallowness on the subject of Cox's chairmanship, see "McCain's Scapegoat" (Sept. 19). Then consider McCain's characteristic accusation that Cox "has betrayed the public's trust."

Perhaps an old antagonism is involved in McCain's fact-free slander. His most conspicuous economic adviser is Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who previously headed the Congressional Budget Office. There he was an impediment to conservatives, including then-Rep. Cox, who, as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, persistently tried and generally failed to enlist CBO support for "dynamic scoring" that would estimate the economic growth effects of proposed tax cuts.

In any case, McCain's smear -- that Cox "betrayed the public's trust" -- is a harbinger of a McCain presidency. For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive -- there are no other people. McCain's Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law's restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending. (For details, see The Post of Sept. 17; and the New York Times of Sept. 19.)

By a Gresham's Law of political discourse, McCain's Queen of Hearts intervention in the opaque financial crisis overshadowed a solid conservative complaint from the Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the RSC decried the improvised torrent of bailouts as a "dangerous and unmistakable precedent for the federal government both to be looked to and indeed relied upon to save private sector companies from the consequences of their poor economic decisions." This letter, listing just $650 billion of the perhaps more than $1 trillion in new federal exposures to risk, was sent while McCain's campaign, characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence, was airing an ad warning that Obama favors "massive government, billions in spending increases."

The political left always aims to expand the permeation of economic life by politics. Today, the efficient means to that end is government control of capital. So, is not McCain's party now conducting the most leftist administration in American history? The New Deal never acted so precipitously on such a scale. Treasury Secretary Paulson, asked about conservative complaints that his rescue program amounts to socialism, said, essentially: This is not socialism, this is necessary. That non sequitur might be politically necessary, but remember that government control of capital is government control of capitalism. Does McCain have qualms about this, or only quarrels?

On "60 Minutes" Sunday evening, McCain, saying "this may sound a little unusual," said that he would like to replace Cox with Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic attorney general of New York who is the son of former governor Mario Cuomo. McCain explained that Cuomo has "respect" and "prestige" and could "lend some bipartisanship." Conservatives have been warned.

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

[Neil D]

Wow...for conservative George Will to come out swinging at this stage of the elections......

...McCain, with his temper, is gonna implode his campaign....

....and you guys thought Palin was cute....

[Kountzer]

Wow. This election is one for the books. It has more ups and downs and plot twists than any more ever made. After the republican convention and Pallins' popularity took off like a rocket, I thought Obama and the Dems were done for. It is not over with yet. Who knows what will occur between now and Nov. 4th.

DB

[jasd]

>>....and you guys thought Palin was cute....<<

Still do. Smart too. Hot also. On top of that, she juiced McCain's campaign. Remember, the photos of

McCain - out of money and carrying his own bag - when exiting the plane on his campaign stops?

Per Geo Will. Sharp. Enjoy reading him; however, he is Geo Will, not Pope Will. He is the conservative's conservative. Given that, sometimes he can't grasp narratives that do not adhere to his perception of strictly conservative matrixes.

“There was no transparency into the books of Wall Street banks. Banks and brokers took on huge amounts of debt and they hid the riskiest investments. Mismanagement and greed became the operating standard while regulators were asleep at the switch.

The primary regulator of Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) kept in place trading rules that let speculators and hedge funds turn our markets into a casino. They allowed naked short selling — which simply means that you can sell stock without ever owning it. They eliminated last year the uptick rule that has protected investors for 70 years. Speculators pounded the shares of even good companies into the ground.

The Chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the President and has betrayed the public’s trust. If I were President today, I would fire him.” --McCain

Well, there are regulations and there are regulations. That said, what in the above is not spot-on? Where is the Queen of Hearts in the above?

Pope Will is simply Geo Will.

Per the WSJ “editorializing”:

The “Street” has given the Dems five times as much in contributions as they have given the Rebubs --$35,000,000. [lets’ not even get into the monies given Dodd (D), Schumer (D), Frank (D), Obama (D), etc... by Freddie and Fannie]

As another ‘Hottie’ put it, “That's why betting their entire industry on ‘subprime’ loans to people with no jobs and no collateral made sense to them -- and why betting the entire U.S. economy on the likes of Hillary and Obama makes sense to them...”

"false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" –Geo Will

“During his tenure at the SEC, Chairman Cox has made vigorous enforcement of the securities laws the agency's top priority, bringing ground breaking cases against a variety of market abuses including hedge fund insider trading, stock options backdating, fraud aimed at senior citizens, municipal securities fraud, and securities scams on the Internet. He has assumed leadership of the international effort to more closely integrate U.S. and overseas regulation in an era of global capital markets and international securities exchanges.” --Puff Piece Bio on Cox, A Mandate

A Mandate. Wha’happened?

So, did or did not Cox have surveillance functions? Bet your sweet Bippy! So, why should not someone be incensed with the likes of Cox’s surveillance of the SEC?

“I would that ye be hot or cold than lukewarm.” --Jesus Christ

Was it ’03 or ’05 that McCain pushed legislation to reform Freddie and Fannie – and, Obama had no contributions to offer – other than silence. So, one assumes that somehow

'Silence translates to Change'. "What we need is change..." -Obama, airs 50% more negative ads than his opponent.

“So, is not McCain's party now conducting the most leftist administration in American history?” --Geo Will

See what I mean about Geo Will’s perception of strictly conservative matrixes? He seems not to recall that loans, even bank to bank, had already frozen. That is, “No movement!”

Capital contraction gave us the Great Depression. This Administration was constrained to take any offer that either the Fed or Congress gave it – that it might ink it muy pronto!

And Obama prefers to laugh and scratch, shuck and jive with the Student Body at Ole Miss!?

:-o

[Dr. Shane]

George Will is conservative but remember, a lot of conservative have never liked McCain. McCain has been a maverick for a long time in Washington and has rubbed a lot of conservatives the wrong way. Radio talk show hosts continue to rail against McCain. Glenn Beck says that he will probably grudgingly vote for McCain but has still not decided.

[Tom Wetmore]

Yes, but the rub here has little to do with conservative vs. liberal or anything to do with being independent or moderate. For George Will it appears to come down to temperament. Do we want some hot-headed reactionary flying off the handle and losing his head? George Will is significantly more restrained on this point than a number of others, including Republican supporters. This from Jonathan Alter's column in the current issue of Newsweek:

Quote:

Part of the problem is McCain's explosive temper. He blows up, then apologizes and is quickly forgiven. The forgiveness is "directly related to an appreciation of what he has suffered [in Vietnam]," says a Democrat who didn't want to be named talking about a colleague. "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine," Republican Sen. Thad Cochran told The Boston Globe in January. "He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me." Cochran, a McCain supporter, now says McCain has learned to control his emotions better. But I've spoken to four senators and two former senators in recent weeks who believe Cochran's concerns are widely shared in the Senate. Five of the six think that McCain is temperamentally unsuited to the presidency. None would speak for the record.

For the full article - A Reality Check on 'Change'

[Dr. Shane]

The backdrop is that conservatives have long disliked McCain so now when they come out with "concerns" about him on one issue or another those "concerns" fall under the shadow of their previous dislike for him.

[jasd]

>>...to come down to temperament. Do we want some hot-headed reactionary flying off the handle and losing his head?<<

I believe it was I who first made that observation on this forum, “...wallbanger.” That said, I afterwards qualified my observation – given the more and more obvious; that is, the Marxist tendencies of Obama and the selection of Palin by McCain. We have the less than optimum choice between a “wallbanger” and an incipient [or full-fledged?] Marxist.

For me, it is a no-brainer. There is no evidence that McCain is consistently and/or overly ‘temperamental’ – so, say there is a 50/50 chance he will loose his temper on occasion. Nixon was in fairly constant turmoil – and yet, he was one of our most effective Presidents – there having never been the question that he might ‘lean’ on the Red Button. There are simply too many safeguards surrounding the issue.

Now, Obama!? A Marxist is a Marxist 100% of the time. Should one ever having been compromised – he is compromised 100% in both time and commitment. Am I being shrill?

Can we chance it – given the strange manner by which he has been ‘handled’ throughout his life? I mean, c’mon, what 2nd year law student gets approached by an agent and subsequently, given a $40,000 advance against publishing...? So many of these question remain unanswered.

I would have simply passed on this election cycle except that – Palin happened. I’d rather she headed the ticket but that will come. Hence, I, homo noetic, looking to a Palin future, vote Rebub...

[Bravus]

jasd: did you watch Palin's interview with Katie Couric? Laying aside your appreciation for Palin's (alleged) 'hotness', did you see a woman who was on top of the issues and ready to run the country?

[jasd]

>>...did you watch Palin's interview with Katie Couric? Laying aside your appreciation for Palin's (alleged) 'hotness', did you see a woman who was on top of the issues and ready to run the country?<<

Yes, saw it. Saw also that she was gunshy of the major media. Understandable, given their lowhandedness (Palin's words left on the ABC cutting room floor and such...). It is my considered opinion that she ought to view them as mooses? meeses? musses? aw shucks, just shoot'em and skin'em :-o

I saw also Palin attempting to echo McCain's positions, as is expected of her. She's being handled too much. Big mistake. McCain ought to simply let Palin be Palin - or he runs the risk of losing.

Speaking of the second slot on the tickets: did you catch Biden's newest gaffe? Were his gaffes legal tender and was our Congress up to snuff - our Democrat Congress could trade off Biden's gaffes for all that worthless paper (aka 'affordable housing' for those who cannot service debt) we're currently set to buy

[carolaa]

McCain Loses His Head

By George F. Will

Tuesday, September 23, 2008; A21

On "60 Minutes" Sunday evening, McCain, saying "this may sound a little unusual," said that he would like to replace Cox with Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic attorney general of New York who is the son of former governor Mario Cuomo. McCain explained that Cuomo has "respect" and "prestige" and could "lend some bipartisanship." Conservatives have been warned.

I like Andrew Cuomo. Maybe McCain is trying to reach across the aisle and bring in the Democrats. I mean, he's got the Republicans pretty much in the bag, so why not?