Splashed across the front page of Sunday’s Arizona Republic, the state’s largest newspaper, is a color photo of Senator John McCain, with the bold headline: “Convictions and Contradictions.” Now, the conservative mouthpiece has a long history of political king-making and shilling for Republican candidates, so it comes as no surprise they’d do a puff piece of their favorite son. But with a headline like “Convictions and Contradictions,” you’d think they might spend some time on that second word. I was soon disabused of any such notion.
What you’ll find instead is the usual “maverick” and “go his own way” crap the media have spewed for years. After the first couple paragraphs of the story, I gave up counting the number of times McCain is referred to as a maverick, as someone not afraid to buck the GOP. Nearly every person quoted in the article – mostly former and current staffers – refers to his long tradition of independence. The Senator’s record of voting with Bush 95 percent of the time is slipped in, and then quickly passed over. His ties to lobbyists and Charles Keating are noted in a sidebar, with no follow-up. The article puts McCain in the same company with Theodore Roosevelt, Mo Udall, and Jim Webb! Even his mistakes, such as some of his appalling economic decisions, are cast in a positive light. “He actually admits error more than most,” Arizona’s other Senator, Jon Kyl, puffs, seeing McCain’s bad judgment as somehow endearing. Ah, the maverick. His campaign couldn’t have purchased a better PR piece.
Here is what the Republic’s readers did not read ONE WORD of in today’s article, which covers more than two pages. But I guess that wasn't enough room to mention some other “convictions and contradictions.”
- As we know, McCain is a former POW who enjoys a lot of support from the military. “Support the troops” is one of his and Bush’s “convictions.” But the “contradiction” is that McCain still has not signed the Webb-Hagel GI Bill. As a vet myself, I’d like to see that little tidbit mentioned in the article.
- We hear from pundits that McCain is the “moral authority” on torture, and his television “conviction” is that he is against waterboarding. Great, but that pesky “contradiction” keeps rearing its ugly head, in the form of McCain’s recent support for Bush’s veto of the anti-waterboarding bill. Gee, that escaped the article too.
- And then there’s his “conviction” that something needs to be done about global warming. Once again he’s the maverick bucking the wingnuts’ ongoing assault on the environment. Had the Republic staff interviewed anyone from the League of Conservation Voters, however, they might have mentioned, at least in a footnote, that he received a perfect score from that outfit last year: zero, that’s right, a 0!
- Also somehow omitted from the article during the week we remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is McCain’s congressional vote against establishing the federal holiday, or his support of Arizona Governor Evan Meacham’s decision to rescind the state MLK Day that Governor Babbitt had previously signed into law. I can’t figure out if that’s a conviction or contradiction. It just sucks.
- If he’s such an independent – almost a libertarian in some respects, the article suggests – you’d think Senator McCain’s “conviction” would be to permit women the right to choose what they do with their own bodies. That commonsense idea, however, is trumped by one of his scarier “contradictions”: his goal of appointing justices to the Supreme Court who will overturn Roe. If you’re an Obama supporter who vows not to support Hillary if she wins the nomination, or a Clinton fan who will not vote for Barack, this issue alone should give you pause. Again, kinda missed in the article.
I could go on an on about the stories you did not read in today’s Arizona Republic: McCain’s “conviction” that he is outside Beltway politics, but the “contradiction” that his campaign has more lobbyists in senior positions than any other. His “conviction” two election cycles ago that Falwell and his ilk are dangerous “agents of intolerance,” but the recent “contradiction” that he has embraced the hate-mongering of Hagee and Parsley, about whom there is not one syllable in the story. And don’t even get me going on his no vote of SCHIP – again, no mention to you parents reading the story.
Two of McCain's more strongly held “convictions” are mentioned in the article and they are indeed accurate, I’ll give the Republic staff that: 1) The Senator has no economic plan and he supports Bush's tax cuts, and 2) he would be the president of unending war. If those are your convictions, my friends, he’s your man. That maverick.