Is McCain Another George W. Bush?

Tuesday 19 August 2008

by: Jack Cafferty, CNN

(Photo: AP)

New York - Russia invades Georgia and President Bush goes on vacation. Our president has spent one-third of his entire two terms in office either at Camp David, Maryland, or at Crawford, Texas, on vacation.

His time away from the Oval Office included the month leading up to 9/11, when there were signs Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America, and the time Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city of New Orleans.

Sen. John McCain takes weekends off and limits his campaign events to one a day. He made an exception for the religious forum on Saturday at Saddleback Church in Southern California.

I think he made a big mistake. When he was invited last spring to attend a discussion of the role of faith in his life with Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, McCain didn't bother to show up. Now I know why.

It occurs to me that John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current president. When asked what his Christian faith means to him, his answer was a one-liner. "It means I'm saved and forgiven." Great scholars have wrestled with the meaning of faith for centuries. McCain then retold a story we've all heard a hundred times about a guard in Vietnam drawing a cross in the sand.

Asked about his greatest moral failure, he cited his first marriage, which ended in divorce. While saying it was his greatest moral failing, he offered nothing in the way of explanation. Why not?

Throughout the evening, McCain chose to recite portions of his stump speech as answers to the questions he was being asked. Why? He has lived 71 years. Surely he has some thoughts on what it all means that go beyond canned answers culled from the same speech he delivers every day.

He was asked "if evil exists." His response was to repeat for the umpteenth time that Osama bin Laden is a bad man and he will pursue him to "the gates of hell." That was it.

He was asked to define rich. After trying to dodge the question -- his wife is worth a reported $100 million -- he finally said he thought an income of $5 million was rich.

One after another, McCain's answers were shallow, simplistic, and trite. He showed the same intellectual curiosity that George Bush has -- virtually none.

Where are John McCain's writings exploring the vexing moral issues of our time? Where are his position papers setting forth his careful consideration of foreign policy, the welfare state, education, America's moral responsibility in the world, etc., etc., etc.?

John McCain graduated 894th in a class of 899 at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. His father and grandfather were four star admirals in the Navy. Some have suggested that might have played a role in McCain being admitted. His academic record was awful. And it shows over and over again whenever McCain is called upon to think on his feet.

He no longer allows reporters unfettered access to him aboard the "Straight Talk Express" for a reason. He simply makes too many mistakes. Unless he's reciting talking points or reading from notes or a TelePrompTer, John McCain is lost. He can drop bon mots at a bowling alley or diner -- short glib responses that get a chuckle, but beyond that McCain gets in over his head very quickly.

I am sick and tired of the president of the United States embarrassing me. The world we live in is too complex to entrust it to someone else whose idea of intellectual curiosity and grasp of foreign policy issues is to tell us he can look into Vladimir Putin's eyes and see into his soul.

George Bush's record as a student, military man, businessman and leader of the free world is one of constant failure. And the part that troubles me most is he seems content with himself.

He will leave office with the country $10 trillion in debt, fighting two wars, our international reputation in shambles, our government cloaked in secrecy and suspicion that his entire presidency has been a litany of broken laws and promises, our citizens' faith in our own country ripped to shreds. Yet Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been.

I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him.

Editor's Note: Jack Cafferty is the author of the best-seller "It's Getting Ugly Out There: The Frauds, Bunglers, Liars, and Losers Who Are Hurting America." He provides commentary on CNN's "The Situation Room" daily from 4 p.m.-7 p.m. You can also visit Jack's Cafferty File blog.

McCain: Senator, Grow Up!

Monday 18 August 2008

by: Keith Olbermann, MSNBC Countdown

"Though victory in Iraq is finally in sight," you told the V-F-W today, Senator McCain, "a great deal still depends on the decisions and good judgment of the next president. The hard-won gains of our troops hang in the balance. The lasting advantage of a peaceful and democratic ally in the heart of the Middle East could still be squandered by hasty withdrawal and arbitrary timelines. And this is one of many problems in the shifting positions of my opponent, Senator Obama."

The shifting positions of Senator Obama?

Senator McCain - on the 22nd of May, 2003 ... you said, of Iraq, on the Senate floor, quote:

"We won a massive victory in a few weeks, and we did so with very limited loss of American and allied lives. We were able to end aggression with minimum overall loss of life, and we were even able to greatly reduce the civilian casualties of Afghani and Iraqi citizens.

Senator - you declared victory in Iraq, five years and nearly three months ago.

Today you say: "victory in Iraq is finally in sight"?

The victory you already proclaimed five years ago?

Are we going back in time Sir?

If that had not been enough, in June of 2003, with even Fox News noting "many argue the conflict (in Iraq) isn't over," you answered:

"Well, then why was there a banner that said 'Mission Accomplished' on the aircraft carrier? Look, the - I have said a long time that reconstruction of Iraq would be a long, long, difficult process, but the conflict - the major conflict is over, the regime change has been accomplished, and it's very appropriate."

In 2003, your war was won, because somebody was putting up a... banner.

In 2008, your war might finally be won, because you are putting up... a campaign based on the mirage that Iraq is winnable.

And yet it is Obama shifting positions on Iraq?

Even if this country were to forget, Senator, the victory lap you and President Bush took five years ago - just on their face, your remarks today at the V-F-W, Senator, are nonsensical.

"Senator Obama commits the greater error of insisting that even in hindsight, he would oppose the surge. Even in retrospect, he would choose the path of retreat and failure for America over the path of success and victory."

This construction, Senator, is extremely simple.

If your surge worked, the troops would be home from Iraq.

Or most of them, would be.

Or all of them who were surged, would be.

Or at least we'd have the same number of troops in Iraq now, as we did then.

Or... maybe one or two guys would be out of harm's way.

Please, Senator McCain, stop!

This is embarrassing.

Whether on his own impetus or an advisor's...

The Senator also foolishly invoked his opponent in that speech today.

Previous political careers have foundered on the rocks of the V-F-W Convention:

The Republican majority in Congress and the Senate - the very viability of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld - began to unravel at this convention two years ago - that was the venue for the first of Rumsfeld's two references to Bush critics as Nazi Appeasers.

Prudence and judgement, demanded that Senator McCain tred lightly.

Instead he told the convention, quote:

"I suppose from my opponent's vantage point, veterans concerns are just one more issue to be spun or worked to advantage. This would explain why he has also taken liberties with my position on the GI Bill.... As a political proposition, it would have much easier for me to have just signed on to what I considered flawed legislation. But the people of Arizona, and of all America, expect more from their representatives than that, and instead I sought a better bill. I'm proud to say that the result is a law that better serves our military, better serves military families, and better serves the interests of our country."

Senator McCain spoke out against that very bill last May - on the asinine premise that the rewards to our heroes were so good that it didn't encourage them to stay in the service.

Or perhaps force them.

More over, Senator McCain missed 10 of the 14 Senate votes on Iraq up to the middle of last year.

This year, he has missed them all - including one to honor the sacrifice of the fallen.

He has voted to table or oppose:

20 million dollars for veteran's health care facilities.

322 million dollars for safety equipment for our troops in Iraq.

430 million dollars for veterans outpatient care.

One billion dollars in new equipment for the National Guard.

And, in separate votes: One billion, 500 million dollars in additional Veterans' medical care, to be created by closing tax loopholes.

And one billion, 800 million dollars in additional Veterans' medical care, to be created by closing tax loopholes.

And yet, Sir, you have the audacity to stand in front of the very Veterans you repeatedly and consistently sell out, and claim it is your opponent who has put politics first, and country second.

"Behind all of these claims and positions by Senator Obama lies the ambition to be president," you said - with a straight face - today. "What's less apparent is the judgment to be commander in chief. And in matters of national security, good judgment will be at a premium in the term of the next president - as we were all reminded ten days ago by events in the nation of Georgia."

Senator, three points:

One - is your increasingly extremist and reactionary language towards Senator Obama really the method by which you want to try to achieve the Presidency - or perhaps split the country if you succeed?

Two - criticizing a man for having quote "the ambition to be president"? Seriously? You do realize you are currently running for president, as well, right? That either you also have "ambition to be president" or, what?, somebody's blackmailing you into it?

And three - you might want to ask somebody - somebody other than say, your Foreign Policy Advisor, Randy Scheunemann - whether or not you are making a jackass out of yourself every time you bring up the conflict between Georgia and Russia.

The Georgians have paid Mr. Scheunemann and his companies 800-thousand dollars over the last several years to lobby for them.

It's pretty clear the Georgians have bought Mr. Scheunemann.

And, Senator McCain, it sure as hell looks like the Georgians thought they had bought you.

When you had the tastelessness to paraphrase the rallying cry of 9/11 and say that we are now all Georgians, that nation's President called you out...

He said that your words were very nice, but he needed action - not a verbal receipt from a lobbyist and his pet Senator!

Going back to the beginning of this sad 48 hours of paranoia from the McCain Campaign...

We have manager Rick Davis's unfortunate letter to NBC News, about Andrea Mitchell's reporting on the possibility that Senator McCain violated the so-called "Cone of Silence" for the Rick Warren Presidential Forum over the weekend.

The coverage of this detail, and that forum in general, is, to start with, overwrought.

But Mr. Davis has elevated them to the ridiculous.

As Nate Silver at the website 'Five-Thirty-Eight-dot-com' noted, Andrea's reporting - reporting of what the Obama camp claimed - included two essential observations:

"McCain may not have been in the cone of silence"... and that he

"May have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama".

Rick Davis writes to NBC: "The fact is that during Senator Obama's segment at Saddleback last night, Senator McCain was in a motorcade to the event and then held in a green room with no broadcast feed."

As Silver astutely notes, for roughly the first half of Obama's participation, his own campaign manager places McCain in a car - where he could have been made aware of the questions to Senator Obama. "In a motor vehicle," Silver writes, "one may use the radio, a cellphone, a Blackberry, Bluetooth Wireless, a Slingbox, and perhaps a satellite TV feed. Whether McCain actually used any of those devices, we have no idea. But he absolutely had the ability to use them, which is all that Mitchell had reported."

Silver also tripped over Mr. Davis's strange observation that for roughly the second half of Obama's participation, his own campaign places McCain, quote, "in a green room with no broadcast feed."

Not a green room without cell service or internet, nor without a closed-circuit feed, nor, for that matter, without a guy running back from the audience with notes, written in crayon.

Rick Davis's argument is, in short, illegitimate.

It is an attempt to pick a fight with the media, over the journalistic equivalent of chewing gum in class.

"This is irresponsible journalism and sadly, indicative of the level of objectivity we have witnessed at NBC News this election cycle," he writes.

"We are concerned that your News Division is following MSNBC's lead in abandoning non-partisan coverage of the Presidential race. We would like to request a meeting with you as soon as possible to discuss our deep concerns about the news standards and level of objectivity at NBC."

What Davis is really saying here, of course, is that he wants no level of objectivity, that the only campaign he wants questioned is Obama, and that "partisan coverage" consists of questioning whether McCain or his campaign support the stage whispers branding Obama as somehow 'foreign,' or whether McCain is to be inoculated from all criticism by dint of his military service.

Senator McCain - did you pay any attention to the Democratic primaries?

Did you notice the hair-pulling frenzy of some of Senator Clinton's supporters who could not face the possibility that her loss might have been her fault - or theirs - and thus it must be ours?

Do you remember the apoplexy of a washed up Republican operative named Ed Gillespie, writing a furious letter to NBC on behalf of President Bush?

Mr. Bush's support has since dropped.

And Senator Clinton's supporters have now relocated to such a degree that her "eighteen million voices" first re-counted themselves as "two million" and were then unable to get even 250 people to show up at a meeting.

The public sees through this nonsense, Senator - they see through it quickly.

NBC and MSNBC do not have the power to seriously impact an election.

If we did - Senator Pat Buchanan would already be serving with you.

Besides which, Senator, who in your camp thought it was a good idea to take a shot at NBC and MSNBC... during the Olympics on NBC and MSNBC?!?

During the Olympics, Senator McCain, on which you have already run millions of dollars' worth of McCain Campaign commercials... on NBC and MSNBC!?!

Senator, let me wrap this up.

You - and your campaign - need a serious and immediate attitude adjustment.

Despite what you may think, Senator McCain, this is not a coronation.

Despite how you have acted, Senator McCain, you have no automatic excuse to politicize anything you want.

Despite how you have whined, Senator McCain, you have no entitlement to only sycophantic, deceptive, air-brushed coverage in the media.

And despite how you have strutted, Senator McCain, you have no God-given right to the Presidency.

Let's have an adult campaign here, in other words - and I am embarrassed to have to say this to a man who turns 72 at the end of this month - Senator, grow up!

Good night, and good luck.

Journalists and their good friends in the White House

The wall between the government and the establishment media barely even exists in theory any longer.

Glenn Greenwald

Aug. 20, 2008 | The Washington Post's White House reporter, Michael Abramowitz, was asked yesterday during a chat to name some of his "favorite people who work at the White House but who are not in the spotlight," and Abramowitz happily and easily offered a long list:

I like your question. One of the things you find in covering the White House is that many of the staff are extremely friendly and dedicated, and it's fun to get to know some of them. The truth is reporters tend to hang out with the people in the [White House] press office, so the names I might give you tend to be lower-level press aides, like Carlton Carroll, Stuart Siciliano and Pete Seat -- and spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore. They are extremely helpful to me (and I don't mean this list to be all-inclusive.)

I also enjoy talking with deputy chief of staff Joel Kaplan and deputy national security adviser Jim Jeffrey -- I wouldn't be surprised if Joel is one day a cabinet officer or a CEO somewhere. He has an interesting life story -- he joined the Marines after graduating from Harvard, then became a lawyer and is basically the top aide to Chief of Staff Josh Bolten.

Of course, Joel and others I mention are extremely discreet, so it's not like anyone is really dishing on the president! You need to look elsewhere for that.

That sounds like a really fun and playful circle of friends -- just a great, great group of people -- and Abramowitz seems to derive much satisfaction from being able to be a part of it. Only a curmudgeon -- or some shrill, angry Leftist type that just doesn't understand How Journalism Works -- would begrudge Abramowitz his fun.

But, in theory at least, White House press officials are the principal impediments to a White House reporter's being able to do his job. The core function of the White House press officials with whom Abramowitz loves to "hang out" and of whom he is obviously so fond is to manipulate his reporting in favor of the White House, to conceal or distort facts that are incriminating of the President, to disseminate narratives that promote the Government's goals. That's true in general, and particularly so for the most secretive and manipulative White House in modern American history. For that reason, healthy "watchdog" journalism would dictate that such officials are viewed with suspicion, that the relationship would be far more adversarial than affectionate, that reporters would speak of such officials dispassionately rather than gushing with the kind of personal praise one generally reserves for one's dearest friends and closest colleagues.

That's not to say that reporters need to despise every government official with whom they interact. There's nothing wrong per se with civil interaction, even with those over whom one is supposed to be exerting adversarial scrutiny. Good relationships with government sources can assist a reporter in obtaining otherwise unavailable information that the Government wants to conceal. But Abramowitz, after hailing these White House press officials as good friends, then goes out of his way to emphasize, admiringly, how "extremely discreet" they are, how they don't actually give him any information about the President that they're not authorized or directed to give him. They're simply propaganda agents -- loyal and faithful ones -- and Abramowitz loves them for that and loves to "hang out" with them.

The reason why this mentality matters is reflected in a question that was asked thereafter of Abramowitz, presumably by a reader here who, in essence, copied verbatim a paragraph I wrote on Monday about The Washington Post's mindless, ongoing, government-subservient reporting in the anthrax case:

New York: When reading The Post's coverage of the Bruce Ivins anthrax investigation, it occurs to me that The Post's role has been and continues to be what the establishment media's role generally is -- to serve government sources and amplify their claims, not to investigate their veracity. That's how it was when Saddam Hussein who was the original anthrax culprit, followed by Steven Hatfill, and now Bruce Ivins. It's how Jessica Lynch heroically fought off Iraqi goons in a firefight, how Pat Tillman stood down al-Qaeda monsters until they murdered him, how Iraq possessed mountains of WMD, and now, how Russia has assaulted the consensus values of the Western World by invading a sovereign country and occupying parts of it for a whole week, etc., etc.

All of those narratives came from the government directly into the pages of The Washington Post, which then uncritically conveyed them, often (as in the case of the Jessica Lynch lies and WMD claims) playing a leading role in doing so. Thoughts?

Michael Abramowitz: I don't agree with your basic premise. The media clearly fell down in some of the areas you mention, but sometimes it takes time to get a complete, accurate picture of what happened in murky situations. To take just two of the cases you mention -- Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman: The media continued digging into these cases until the truth came out. It's not always possible to do that in the first day or two of a big story.

Of course Abramowitz doesn't "agree with the basic premise." Establishment journalists think that their profession works just great. There's no profession less capable of self-reflection than the establishment media. Even after the last seven years, they actually still perceive themselves as tenacious diggers for the Truth -- Newsweek's Richard Wolffe: "the press here does a fantastic job of adhering to journalistic standards and covering politics in general" -- and false, government-subservient reporting is, to them, merely the rare aberration, confined to the small handful of Judy Millers among them. That (as Abramowitz's answer illustrates) is how large numbers of them actually think.

But just look at the list of profound journalistic failings which Abramowitz breezily dismisses as both insignificant and understandable. It's certainly true that reporters can't be expected to report on complex stories with complete accuracy on the first day. The cliché that reporters publish "first drafts of history" is true enough, and some inaccuracies are to be expected.

But these are all episodes where the establishment media didn't merely report some inaccuracies. They are instances where they aggressively and vocally spread pure, fundamental falsehoods. And not just falsehoods -- but extremely damaging falsehoods that were concocted by the Government and then passed along to the "watchdog press," which then published the Government falsehoods in full, and did so uncritically, without any meaningful investigation, examination, or skepticism -- not just for days, but for weeks, months and, in many instances, for years.

And one major reason (among several) why they did so -- why they still do so -- is because of the very mentality of which Abramowitz is so proud: they see the government officials whom they cover as their friends, colleagues, the people on whom they depend for their access, whose company they cherish and whose character they admire. Is it really any surprise that journalists who -- as Abramowitz puts it -- "tend to hang out" with their friends in the White House press office uncritically pass on what they're told as though it's Truth?

Recall the drippy, sycophantic paean which Politico's Mike Allen wrote to Bush Communications Director Dan Bartlett's Greatness once Bartlett announced he was leaving the White House (headline: "Bush's 'truth-teller' leaving president's side"). Bush's truth-teller recently parlayed his friendships with the press into a position as "political analyst" with CBS News. The wall between the Government and the establishment media barely even exists in theory any longer. Bartlett's move from Communications Director in Bush's White House to "political analyst" for CBS News is more of a lateral, in-house transfer than it is anything else.

It's actually difficult to find a news story of any significance that isn't shaped at its core by the incestuous, deeply affectionate relationship between the Government and the establishment media. Here's what Mikhail Gorbachev, ironically enough, complained about first and foremost in his New York Times Op-Ed this morning on how the Russia/Georgia conflict is being discussed in the U.S.:

The planners of this campaign clearly wanted to make sure that, whatever the outcome, Russia would be blamed for worsening the situation. The West then mounted a propaganda attack against Russia, with the American news media leading the way.

The news coverage has been far from fair and balanced, especially during the first days of the crisis. Tskhinvali was in smoking ruins and thousands of people were fleeing — before any Russian troops arrived. Yet Russia was already being accused of aggression; news reports were often an embarrassing recitation of the Georgian leader's deceptive statements.

A septuagenarian Russian recognizes joint government-media propaganda campaigns when he sees it, and the media's dissemination and amplification of Government narratives that they are fed by their good friends in Government ("I also enjoy talking with deputy chief of staff Joel Kaplan and deputy national security adviser Jim Jeffrey") is the core, defining (though not exclusive) function of the establishment media.

* * * * *

There are many revealing episodes during the Bush presidency illustrating how the media functions, but there is none more revealing than the disclosures from the Lewis Libby criminal trial. Documents prepared by former Cheney Communications Director Catherine Martin (wife of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin) boasted that Tim Russert's Meet the Press was the best venue for Cheney to answer questions because he was able to "control message." Martin also testified at trial that she "suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used. It's our best format" (Dana Milbank: "Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you"). Russert himself subsequently testified that "when any senior government official calls him, they are presumptively off the record" (Dan Froomkin: "That's not reporting, that's enabling. That's how you treat your friends when you're having an innocent chat, not the people you're supposed to be holding accountable").

Just think about what that meant: the single greatest source of government disinformation and corruption in America -- Dick Cheney's office -- viewed Tim Russert as the most pliable and effective instrument for disseminating their propaganda to the country. That's not media critics or rabble-bloggers saying that. That was the view of Russert which Dick Cheney's office had -- and understandably so.

And yet -- or, more accurately, "therefore" -- it's the very same pliant instrument of government disinformation -- Tim Russert -- who was viewed more or less unanimously by the media class as being the embodiment of everything that a Good Journalist should be. The very same person who -- by Dick Cheney's own assessment -- served most eagerly as a propaganda tool for the political class was simultaneously viewed by his colleagues as the Consummate Journalist. If you wanted to prove how subservient our establishment media is to the Government, would it be possible to invent better evidence than that? As Lewis Lapham recently put it in his Harper's piece entitled "Elegy for a Rubber Stamp" (sub. rq'd):

[Russert's] on-air persona was that of an attentive and accommodating headwaiter, as helpless as Charlie Rose in his infatuation with A-list celebrity.

That is who was canonized -- by the media and, revealingly, by the Right -- as the Model of Great Journalism. That's because the core function of the establishment press is to obtain and then disseminate government claims. Those journalists (such as Russert) who can do that best and most effectively -- typically due to their close and amicable relationships with Government officials ("it's fun to get to know some of them. The truth is reporters tend to hang out with the people in the [White House] press office") -- become the most celebrated media stars. As David Halberstam said in 2006: "By and large, the more famous you are, the less of a journalist you are." One could add to that observation that the more gushing affection and admiration you harbor for your "extremely discreet" Government-official/friends, the less of a journalist you are.

-- Glenn Greenwald

Anup Shah, Media Manipulation, GlobalIssues.org, Last updated: Monday, April 17, 2006