John McCain's chief selling point is that he's a straight-talkin' kinda guy. That in itself should tell you how even democrats disbelieve in the fundamental authenticity of democracy: It's just assumed they -- the pols -- are all liars, an assumption buttressed by 2000 years of tortured experience.
But it also says something about optimism being at the core of democracy. There's one of them in every campaign -- the one guy who swears he's not lying like the rest of them; he sells simple honesty as novelty. And on occasion, mass eternal faith hooks up with this singular vending of integrity, and we're off to the races again. All it took was a pol saying he's not the corrupt, prevaricating poltroon that democrats have come to expect.
Do Charlie Brown, Lucy and a football come to mind?
Nevertheless what concerns me about John McCain isn't his honesty shtick. A pol should go with whatever sells, with whatever niche in the market he has successfully carved out for himself. If consumers are in the mood, they'll buy it. The pol's market-positioning may be a trifle laughable, but it's legal.
No, it's not the straight-talkin' gig that worries. What worries is McCain's seeming lack of straight thinking. At least, that is, his historical thinking, which he sells as often and passionately as straightforwardness.
For it may be that McCain is less dishonest than he is simply confused. And that leaves us a frightening choice: Which do we prefer, a Dick Nixon or a Franklin Pierce?
To be more illuminating, what concerns is that McCain is forever hailing two other presidents as ideological role models: Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt. To be sure, his first loyalty oath -- to Reagan -- has been an excavation of necessity; he's had to dig himself out of a lot of deep trouble with the base for having ever voted against those Bushian, supply-siding tax cuts.
In short, he's had to beg forgiveness for having voted against fiscal legislation that has done real, lasting and devastating harm to the nation. Go figure. (But hey, we're talking Republican base here.)
Hence in the present campaign he is reminding voters ad nauseam that he was an interservice "foot soldier in the Reagan revolution," whacking away at government's revenue base while his congressional brethren spent like drunken sailors. The latter development seems to have come as a surprise to McCain, for reasons unexplained by McCain.
At any rate, Ronald's thinking was king, John assures the base: his was unsurpassed in governing wisdom.
Coincidentally, however, McCain extols the virtuous wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt -- which is like a pol saying he most admires both Benito Mussolini and Abraham Lincoln.
For T.R. absolutely despised the plutocrats and "malefactors of great wealth" whom Ronald Reagan so adored and assisted in every way.
McCain hails T.R. as a "free-enterprise, capitalist, full-bore guy" who -- McCain then nearly mumbles -- nonetheless believed in some government regulation. But what T.R. believed virtually cancelled out the "full-bore" stuff and ultimately alienated him from his own party, but good.
He swore, and often acted out, that he would never "submit to the domination in the Republican Party of those selfish interests which have long felt that the government was simply an instrument to further their ends." And in his famous Osawatomie speech he declared that "labor is prior to, and independent of, capital," that "Labor is supreme," that politicians "must be generally progressive," and that he was devoted to the "destruction of special privilege" -- the very kind of special privilege, that is, that Ronald Reagan re-guaranteed 70 years later.
McCain has been quoted as saying "The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should." He should add American history to his list, because he seems more than a bit confused about the core values of his role models. And if he fails to comprehend their conflicting values, how can he comprehend his own?
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