Sex, drama, and fairly obvious lies
The Los Angeles Times and Mark Helprin featured very damaging information that the LA Times found in their routine investigation of John McCain, checking out his own account of his life and his sordid sexual behavior after his release from Hanoi. However, those findings were quickly kyboshed at the time.
As of this week, if we are to be bombarded by Sarah Palin and John McCain’s sharp personal attacks on Obama, perhaps we should revisit the McCain adultery issue as it was raised by The Carpetbagger Report, July 12th of this year, Item: McCain adultery story rocks political world — oh wait, no it doesn’t.
@ http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com...
In the Carpetbagger posting:
We learned that McCain turned his back on his wife after she was seriously injured in a car accident, committed adultery, and left the mother of his children when he found a younger, wealthier woman.
Worse, we also learned that McCain didn’t tell the truth about this in his own memoir. McCain insisted that he was separated from his first wife before he began dating his second wife. That’s not true. McCain also insisted he’d been divorced for months before remarrying. That wasn’t true, either. (In fact, the LAT reported, "McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.")
Clearly, this is the kind of salacious story reporters just love. A presidential candidate, running on his personal background, is found to have a messy past. The story has sex, drama, and fairly obvious lies — everything a news outlet needs for wall-to-wall coverage. What does this tell us about McCain’s character? Will voters care about a conservative Republican’s adultery? What will the "family-values" crowd say? How do we reconcile McCain’s untruths with his alleged proclivity for "straight talk"? Will the revelations hurt McCain in the polls? It’s the kind of story the media can obsess over for months.
BUT WAIT. Actually McCain’s cover for his serial adultery, to which he confesses, is to simply put it aside as part of another, former life. Voters know, however, a character is built over time and upon events as they unfold. Confessing to adultery is helpful to move on, but it doesn’t erase the character flaw(s) from which such untoward behavior arise. This is the man whose campaign for the presidency is based on "trust me."
These are very troubling and perilous times. Everything is at play. Is McCain, whose self-proclaimed image is of a maverick, to be trusted when he has such a terrible record of sexual impropriety and marital deceit? He's also a moral maverick,a rube, that should be a matter of deep concern.
Certainly the Family Values voters are not taken in by McCain's personal life, or are they?
Has it come down to the point where the strong morals coalition--which has been badgering and hectoring the country with its strident standards--is sold out to McCain? McCain’s moral character falls far short of their high standards.
Why then did they endorse McCain? Only because James Dobson and crew are desperate to retain and gain power over the selection of the next 3 or 4 Supreme Court Nominees. Also because they were able to push Sarah Palin on the McCain ticket.
The LA Times Article included this perspective on adulterous John McCain:
Outside her Bel-Air home, Nancy Reagan stood arm in arm with John McCain and offered a significant – but less than exuberant – endorsement.
"Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided, and then we endorsed," the Republican matriarch said in March. "Well, obviously this is the nominee of the party." They were the only words she would speak during the five-minute photo op.
In a written statement, she described McCain as "a good friend for over 30 years." But that friendship was strained in the late 1970s by McCain’s decision to divorce his first wife, Carol, who was particularly close to the Reagans, and within weeks marry Cindy Hensley, the young heiress to a lucrative Arizona beer distributorship.
The Reagans rushed to help Carol, finding her a new home in Southern California with the family of Reagan aide Edwin Meese III and a series of political and White House jobs to ease her through that difficult time.
McCain, who is about to become the GOP nominee, has made several statements about how he divorced Carol and married Hensley that conflict with the public record.
@ http://articles.latimes.com/...
Other Morton Posts on the McCain/Palin Ticket:
Palin’s Gospel: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Maverick: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Palin Vs. Putin: No Contest—We Lose: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Saint Sarah of Wassila: http://www.dailykos.com/...