Worse than Bush

8 Thoughts on the Current Campaigns #2

Yesterday, Atrios summed up exactly what I was thinking about Senator McCain.

(T)here was a time not all that long ago when I thought that a McCain presidency would at least be a marginal improvement over the Bush presidency. Now I believe it would be much, much worse.

Unlike Atrios, I did fall a bit for John McCain in 2000. I thought that if the choice in the general election was between McCain and Gore, we'd be OK. Now, I never bought into the McCain as moderate line, but I did believe him to be the "noble competition". He was the guy from the other side who was willing to engage in a battle of ideas, conservative versus progressive. He was the victim of slime and would never engage in such campaign tactics himself.

Oh well. You live, you learn.

The bloom fell off the rose for me immediately following 9/11. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, McCain was ready to start a war with Iraq. He was, outside of the members of the Bush administration, the most consistent hawkish voice in the country. Today, he refuses to admit that the war was a mistake. In fact, after listening to him, you would think the war started with the surge.

After Iraq, he seems to be itching for a war with Iran, that even Bush seems to know is a mistake. It would seem that since he fought in a war, he would like to make sure that every man and woman in the armed forces gets that same opportunity. He is awfully cavalier about the loss of life.

I've gotten myself off on a tangent. McCain would be worse than Bush. Yeah.

McCain is a hot head. He loves to brag about being a maverick and his off the cuff style, but ultimately, his style leads to bad ideas, bad policy and the potential for crisis and disaster. He's one of those "leaders" who believes its best to do something and do something quickly. The idea of sitting back, taking a deep breath, reflecting for a moment, is as foreign to him as the idea that the American people would rather have Obama as their President.

McCain's style has led him to pick to unqualified, despicable Sarah Palin to shake things up. It led him to pretend to suspend his campaign and interject himself and the politics of the election into the negotiations for the bailout package. It has led to one shift of tone after the other. Do we need a President this erratic? Is this someone we could trust in a time of crisis to get it right the first time?

Perhaps the area where McCain is truly worse than Bush is in the divisive rhetoric of his campaign. For someone to top the George Bush / Karl Rove team for dirty tricks is astounding. So many people felt so bad for McCain after the onslaught he suffered from Bush and Rove in 2000. The lesson a good person would have taken from his experience is that this type of politics cannot be tolerated. That the electoral process needs to be reformed. What lesson did McCain take? It worked so he'll do it. He'll hire the same people who attacked him in 2000. In fact, he'll go even further. He'll accuse his opponent of being a terrorist sympathizer.

On November 4th, the choice to make is an important one, but it is also a simple one. The choice to make is Barack Obama. Send McCain home to stew in anger and regret at what he has become.