"A New Kind of Politics" notwithstanding, I do believe that I just read one of the most surreal statements yet to fly out of Mccain's mouth. While skimming Google News, I came across some articles about Mccain's stance on energy policy. Obviously, whatever credibility that once lay with him has been thrown right out the window during this campaign. I was certainly not surprised to read about his bashing of Obama over "favoring" the ethanol industry while promising ever bigger handouts to Mssrs. Oil and Coal; if there's one thing that's least surprising to me any more, it's John Mccain's ability to pivot 180 degrees on any given issue. However, one quote stood out as easily as one of wackiest...
When pressed to delineate the difference between his and Obama's energy choices for the future, he stated that his was the one to offer American business the resources needed to explore "multiple options" to solving the energy mess (by offering huge tax cuts to the oil and gas industries I presume). It's in his metaphorical phrasing of the issue that the words take a turn towards bizarre:
"I'm not picking winners and losers here," McCain said during a campaign swing yesterday through Pennsylvania. "I think the way we're going to solve this issue is to let a thousand flowers bloom. I'm for federal funding of pure research and development."
(from Bloomberg. Emphasis mine.)
That's right, true believers. The great Saint Mccain, champion of the free world, defender of whatever political football is tossed his way, just used one of the most famous phrases ever uttered by that other bastion of Democracy, Chairman Mao Zedong.
For the benefit of the wider American public, whom I'm sure has no freaking clue what that quote signifies, allow me to elucidate a bit:
(From Wikipedia.)
The People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, and land reforms dominated the agenda of the new communist government. In the early 1950s, the three-anti/five-anti campaigns brought an end to private ownership of land, and further purged many people the CCP deemed to be landlords and capitalists. The accepted school of thought at the time was Marxism-Leninism, which was re-interpreted by Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong into the guiding ideology of the early 1950s. What would later be known as the Hundred Flowers Movement was first a small campaign aimed solely at local bureaucracies for non-communist-affiliated officials to speak out about the policies and the existing problems within the central government in a manner previously considered illegal.
(snip)
The name of the movement originated in a poem: pinyin: bǎi huā qífàng, bǎi jiā zhēngmíng; English translation: "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend." Mao had used this to signal what he had wanted from the intellectuals of the country, for different and competing ideologies to voice their opinions about the issues of the day. He alluded to the Warring States era when numerous schools of thought competed for ideological, not military, supremacy.
(snip)
By the spring of 1957, Mao had announced that criticism was "preferred" and had begun to mount pressure on those who did not turn in healthy criticism on policy to the Central Government. This was seen to many as a desperate measure to get the campaign going. The reception with intellectuals was immediate, and they began voicing concerns without any taboo. In the period from June 1 to July 17, 1957, millions of letters were pouring in to the Premier's Office and other authorities.
In Mao's opinion, many of these letters had violated the "healthy criticism" level and had reached a "harmful and uncontrollable" level.
In July 1957, Mao ordered a halt to the campaign. By that time Mao had witnessed Khrushchev denouncing Stalin and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, events he felt threatened by. Mao's earlier speech, On the Correct Handling of the Contradictions Among the People, was meaningfully changed and appeared later on as an anti-rightist piece in itself.
Some concluded that Mao knew the outcome before the campaign had even began. The Hundred Flower Campaign identified critics and was used to silence them.
Silence them it certainly did. In fact, the Hundred Flower Campaign could be marked as the beginning of the heavy handed oppression of independent thought that culminated in the reactionary and deadly Cultural Revolution that effectively squashed any lingering dissent and resulted in the deaths of millions.
I have no problem with a presidential candidate making the occasional gaffe. It's a grueling job that I thank Jeebus that I don't have to do. One is bound to slip here and there. However, for a candidate that capitalizes on his career and life history as a DAV to highlight how much he's learned from history, this is a biggie.
This one statement, more than any flub over Sunni/Shia, any "for it before he was against it" nonsense, more than all his "senior moments" combined, proves just how clueless John Mccain really is concerning the world outside D.C. and Sedona. For him to get away with such an outrageous (and likely completely unwitting) approprition is simply inexcusable. The fact that this lowly diary is probably all the press and the public will ever hear or care of this quote is downright disgusting.
I bet you all the community housing in Chicago that Barack Obama knows better than to read from Mao's Little Red Book on the trail.