About 'books by john mccain'|Book Review (12/34) Faith of My Fathers by John McCain
By exceeding low expectations, Alaska governor Sarah Palin won her vice presidential debate against Delaware senator Joe Biden. But that victory won't make people forget John McCain's erratic behavior during the current economic crisis. Although the six-term senator met expectations with his broad display of knowledge, the October 2, 2008 debate wasn't about Joe Biden. It was about whether Sarah Palin would fall on her face in the wake of her disastrous interview with Katie Couric. Not only didn't Sarah Palin collapse, she passed the presentation test with flying colors. Palin, a former beauty queen, is incredibly photogenic. Her glib, quirky style appeals to many voters. She frequently went on the offensive. Palin was particularly effective when she chided Joe Biden for constantly looking at the past errors of the Bush Administration rather than toward the future. While Palin frequently attacked Biden, Biden wisely trained his sights on John McCain. During an October 5, 2008 airing of "Meet The Press", Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, said that Palin is "a natural" in the "show business aspect of politics" but short on substance. I watched the debate hoping to be entertained while suppressing a morbid curiosity as to whether Palin would fall apart. I always considered the probability of the latter event to be quite low. As I suspected, her debate performance, replete with folksy charm, mirrored her acceptance speech. Although Governor Palin occasionally made me laugh, the debate left me more convinced than ever that she is not vice presidential timber. Only the most partisan viewers--and there are many of them--would say the Alaska governor was strong on substance. As you read the following criticisms, keep in mind that throughout most of this campaign, I have leaned strongly in favor of John McCain. Palin's answer to a question on climate change was almost incomprehensible. Don't just take my word for it. Read the debate transcript. A good college student could have expressed herself better. Later in the debate, she offered up this gem: "I'm thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate." That remark was in response to moderator Gwen Ifill's question as to whether Palin would agree with Vice President Dick Cheney "that the executive branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it is also a member of the legislative branch." Biden correctly condemned Palin's statement as a "bizarre notion", forcefully noting Cheney's dangerous abuse of power during his tenure in the nation's second highest office. A June 25, 2007 Washington Post article has a good discussion of this subject. It's peculiar that Palin would support a character like Dick Cheney when John McCain has publicly differed with Cheney on issues such as waterboarding. You really have to wonder whether Palin has ever read the Constitution. The only power that the vice president has over the Senate--that of tie-breaker--is found in Article I, Section 3: "The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided." A decent high school student could have told you that. In fact, it is supremely bizarre that a conservative like Palin would argue for a power that is nowhere stated or implied in the Constitution. According to conventional wisdom, conservatives are originalists. They believe in a literal interpretation of the Constitution. An originalist would say that any powers not enumerated in the Constitution do not exist. But in the debate, it was Biden, a liberal, who expressed the originalist view. On vice presidential power, Biden said: "And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit. " Palin's supporters say that the governor deftly avoided the pitfall of the Couric interview, where Palin could not name a single Supreme Court case she disagreed with besides Roe v. Wade. According to her fans, Palin accomplished this feat by saying that she would not answer one of Ifill's questions. Palin then began to discuss a different subject. It was a smart tactical move by Palin, but it came at a cost: it further emphasized her knowledge gaps. When Ms. Ifill asked Biden to name an issue on which he disagreed with Barack Obama, the Delaware senator wisely offered uncritical support of his running mate. But Palin said that she intended to persuade McCain to change his position on drilling in ANWR. Bad move. A vice presidential nominee's job is a supporting role, not a starring one. Intra-ticket differences are best discussed in private. By replying the way she did, Palin, instead of being a team player, focused the spotlight on herself. Several pundits on Fox News, CNN, and NBC later said that during the debate, Sarah Palin was running for president in 2012 instead of vice president in 2008. While there were problems with Governor Palin's substantive performance, there were also defects in her vaunted style. Her clipped gerunds were exceptionally numerous, even for her. And she winked more than Fran Drescher did in "The Nanny." At first, it was cute, but after awhile I started to think that the woman had an ocular sty. Many of Palin's reported zingers showed an astonishing lack of originality. I counted four phrases that were borrowed from Ronald Reagan: "There you go again"; "Government, you're too often the problem, not always the solution"; " We are a shining city on a hill...a beacon of hope"; and "Government, just get out of my way". Palin only attributed the third to the late president. She also supposedly zinged Biden when she said, "Say it ain't so, Joe." That hackneyed phrase saw the light of day during the Chicago White Sox scandal of 1919. Not exactly forward-looking. Mort Kondracke, the conservative Roll Call columnist, made an astounding pronouncement on Fox News shortly after the debate. Kondracke said that Palin "is not qualified to be president on Day One, but she won't have to be." How can Kondracke be so sure that Governor Palin won't have to step up early in a McCain presidency? Does he have a pipeline to God? I hope that McCain lives to be 100, but life is unpredictable. Did anyone six months ago think that a $700 billion bailout plan would have to be pushed through Congress to prevent the United States from slipping into a depression? If Sarah Palin is not fit to lead on Day One, she has no business running for vice president. Competency of a vice presidential candidate should never be an issue. It's a dangerous distraction from the serious topics of the day. That question was last raised was 20 years ago, when Dan Quayle was running. Humorous books have been written about Quayle's many gaffes, and he was often an embarrassment to George H.W. Bush on the campaign trail. Yet Quayle's resume was much more impressive than Palin's. Before becoming the 44th vice president of the United States, Quayle was director of the Inheritance Tax Division of the Indiana Department of Revenue, a two-term congressman, and a two-term United States senator. Most post-debate polls indicated that people liked Palin more but thought that Biden won on points. However, by exceeding low expectations, Palin, in fact, won the contest. Assuming that there are no more major gaffes or scandals on either side, the vice presidential sideshow will quickly fade from public memory, and attention will be focused where it belongs, on the top of the ticket, which leads me back to Biden's good friend, John McCain. McCain's behavior over the last couple of weeks has been, to say the least, erratic. First he suspended his campaign in the wake of the financial meltdown and said that he would not attend the first debate with Obama on September 26, 2008 if there was no bailout deal. With much fanfare, McCain arrived in Washington hoping to be the knight in shining armor who would save America from financial disaster. Obama looked far more presidential when he said that this was no time for playing politics; that he was ready to go to Washington if called; and that he would attend the debate on September 26 no matter what happened. On September 26, the House voted down the bailout plan; McCain reversed himself, attended the debate, and looked like a fool. The notion that McCain could have taken credit for the bailout was ridiculous. Because McCain had been on the campaign trail for over a year, he was unfamiliar with the political landscape surrounding the financial crisis. In addition, he is on record as saying that he doesn't know much about economics and hasn't thought about the subject very much. If America's greatest economic minds aren't sure of how to treat her monetary ailments, John McCain couldn't possibly find the cure. Moreover, the presence of the candidates probably impeded passage of the bailout package by increasing partisan rancor. Both McCain and Obama attended the negotiations at the invitation of President Bush, but, in photo ops, the two men sat at opposite ends of a table, farthest away from the president, indicating that their presence was largely symbolic. Thus ended McCain's second stunt of the campaign. His first was the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. During his debate with Obama, McCain seemed edgy and off his game. Obama, on the other hand, was poised and crisp. Gone was the stuttering that had plagued him throughout the Democratic primary debates. Obama's answers were organized, succinct, and presented in a bullet-point format. At times, McCain seemed angry. When he spoke about Obama wanting to negotiate with rogue dictators "without preconditions", McCain contorted his face and held out his hands as if he wanted to strangle Obama. Obama then amended his earlier comment, saying that although he would negotiate "without preconditions", he would engage in extensive "preparation" involving low-level contacts, setting an agenda, and so forth. Although Obama's explanation wasn't quite believable, it made sense. As Mr. Spock might say, it was grounded in logic rather than wild emotion. When McCain went to Washington to attend the bailout negotiations, he said that it was his patriotic duty to do so, that he was being a good navy man, responding to the call for "all hands on deck." John McCain is a true patriot and a man to be admired, but in recent weeks, he's looked like someone who isn't playing with a full deck. Several weeks ago, I called the conservative radio host Monica Crowley and suggested that McCain might be too temperamental to be president. She angrily asked, "Where did you hear that from, the liberal media?" Um, no. I first read it in a 2006 article on NewsMax, a conservative publication. The article quotes several prominent Republicans as saying that McCain is a major hothead. In addition to describing McCain's cursing jags, one of the Republicans recounts a joke McCain told about Janet Reno and Chelsea Clinton that is too vile to repeat here. In the same article, McCain himself admits that he has a temper problem. When a far-left person and a staunch conservative agree on something, that opinion is compelling, especially in this age of hyper-partisanship. George Will, a red-blooded conservative, and Paul Krugman, a far-left columnist, both believe that McCain is temperamentally ill-suited to handle the current economic crisis. Compare Will's September 23, 2008 New York Post column with Krugman's September 28, 2008 column in the New York Times. At this point, McCain reminds me of Charlie Chaplin in "A King In New York", the last and worst film Chaplin ever made. The movie was made in 1957, when Chaplin was 68 years old. He was heavy, slow, and dependent on sight gags that went out with the Charlston. While McCain throws pies at the wall, Obama, an alleged "stealth radical", seems conservative, a cool, careful man with a steady hand on the tiller. |
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