Respectful: The Passing of John McCain

He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.
-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act I)

So the news came tonight that Sen. John McCain, former Presidential candidate in 2008, primary challenger in 2000, passed away from the brain cancer that plagued him his final year.

Much of McCain's biography - the reckless youth of being a Navy family brat, the wartime pilot shot down over Vietnam and tortured as a POW, the years of Arizona politics from Congressman to Senator to Presidential hopeful - will get rehashed elsewhere, here I need to speak to the personal feelings I have for the man and for the Republican Party he tried to lead for the last twenty or so years.

Back in those days, before I turned Apostate, I tried being a Republican along the moderate lines of an Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt. By 2000 that meant following McCain, who presented himself as a Reformer with regards to elections/campaigning and other issues (although on key GOP issues like abortion and tax cuts he remained devout). I followed McCain because the alternative was George W. Bush (aka Bush the Lesser), and by 2000 I had no love for the Bush family at all. Jeb in particular - pandering SOB who fell assbackwards into the Florida governorship in 1998 - had earned my personal hatred for a hundred lifetimes.

But I truly believed McCain was genuine, a possible chance at getting a Republican candidate who had the charm and political will to make effective changes. I was angry at the party sabotage of his South Carolina primary, and I regretted the fact that by the time I was in the streets of Ft. Lauderdale waving McCain signs that March that McCain had to suspend his efforts.

I will still argue - for all that I know today about McCain and all the other possibilities between then and now - that if McCain had been the GOP nominee in 2000, our nation would have been better off than the disaster that ended up being the Dubya years.

I lost a lot of admiration for him during the 2008 campaigning, when he kept pandering to the GOP deep-pockets and kept making grandiose promises that ended up being staged phoniness. I still can't believe he stood up David Letterman on the excuse of responding to the Economic Meltdown of 2007-08, only to end up getting caught on-camera preening for yet another Beltway talking head show. Why did you sink that low, boss?

But there will be moments that stick out for me, the moments when he tried to speak to our better angels during a bitter 2008 campaign, when the Far Right media was going out of its way to fearmonger about Obama. In a place and in front of people who could have turned against him, McCain spoke well of his Democratic opponent, tried to speak to a "respectful" position that tried to make it clear that while Republican and Democrat may be on opposite sides of an argument we were all still Americans:

"No, ma'am. No, ma'am. He's a decent, family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about. He's not (an Arab). Thank you."

He respected others. At the end of the day, despite political pandering at times, despite sticking to agendas that were oft-times partisan, McCain kept the Faith. He kept the Faith about America and about fellow Americans and did what he could to keep his party base from going off the rails into the pit of race hatred and worse.

That and the fact McCain had a level of self-deprecating humor that made him a decent Saturday Night Live host.

It's a damn shame McCain died knowing full well the current bastard in the White House took the dark and easy path of racial pandering, the path McCain refused to take. In the end, McCain was willing to risk the loss of 2008 to retain his own integrity, an integrity the cheater in 2016 never had.

There was little love lost between McCain and trump: McCain the military man who suffered as a Prisoner of War in Vietnam, trump the goddamned draft dodger who had the discourtesy to insult McCain for being a "loser" who got caught and tortured. This is how our nation is right now: the worst possible man with political power, likely mocking the more honorable soul whose passing will be better remembered. If anything, McCain will have the last laugh: Obama was invited to speak at McCain's funeral, not trump.

I shook McCain's hand once. It might have been 2005 (maybe 2004), and it was before he broke my heart in 2008. While working at the University of Florida, I came across a setup in the Reitz Union grass plaza for a graduation ceremony and found out that he would be the honored speaker. I took a seat along one aisle, not realizing it would be the aisle where the parade would head to the stage. So there I was completely surprised and shaking his hand and telling him I voted for him in 2000 and he smiled and nodded and that was about it.

McCain will likely be the last Republican I will ever respect, even just a bit, even through all the disagreements I eventually had when he surrendered enough of his identity as a "reformer" for party power in 2008 and afterward.

I grew to regret what had happened, partly despairing that a lot of it was because his Republican Party kept sinking into that racist fearmongering morass, and that rather than reform it or abandon it to retain his honor he sank with it. But in some respects a Great Man has passed, possibly the last one who tried to save something that didn't want to be saved.

I am looking up in the sky tonight for comets. The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

Ignoreland Lyrics Still Have Meaning

If they weren't there we would have created them
Maybe, it's true
But I'm resentful all the same
Someone's got to take the blame
I know that this is vitriol
No solution, spleen-venting
But I feel better having screamed, don't you? - REM "Ignoreland"

I've been spending this Labor Day weekend breaking out an old story I tried submitting to the Anvil Press 3-Day Novel contest. It was a complete mess but it was the most I'd ever written for one of those 3-Day things (oy, the time limit is ruthless). I'm getting it out now so I can use it to teach an e-Publish class this month at the library.

I wrote it in 2008, during the final days of the Dubya administration and venting a ton of outrage at the ongoing scandals of the mis-managed wars and crashing economy. Funny thing, I haven't looked at it in years - trying to focus on more sci-fi and superhero writing to make a niche there - but breaking it out now I am horrified by how many crimes were left ignored these past eight years.

I just need to update it to the horrors of the 2016 election cycle and I should have something novella-sized for your Amazon Kindles. I'll keep you informed.

One last look at 2008

1) I was writing this prolonged, poorly researched rant about the fall of the Republican Party this past November, but as time wore on and as I bore witness to more GOP crazy, I realized my take wasn't really going to cover as much as I wanted. So... I'm thinking different thoughts about the matter, and will hopefully get something pounded off my keyboard by oh the 2010 midterms. :)

2) I cannot understand why Karl Rove is still out there saying such unbelievable crap about George W. Bush being a voracious reader. He apparently hopes we all forgot how George already tried to impress us by reading Camus... which turned out not so well. Why Rove thinks that painting Dubya as some intellectual bookworm will help Bush's legacy is beyond me: Bush's selling points has always been his 'salt of the earth' beer in a bar kinda guy. Bush's legacy as of right now is utter trash, and not even 50 years of attempts at hagiography is going to help.

3) I look back at 8 Bush years, and back at 8 Clinton years, and realize that's 16 years of political partisanship bullsh-t that won't go away. Regrets, I've had a few...

4) Buy my book. No, seriously, I'm unemployed and need the income.

5) Of my New Year's Resolutions, I kept a couple: I found a reform advocacy group (FairVote) that I can see about joining, and I did write a book... albeit during the 3-day Novel contest, massively unfinished but at least 115 pages and pretty much covers beginning and end (everything else needs massive editing and inserted plot points to make things read better). Now, for next year's...

Three Reasons I Will Not Vote for McCain

My anger expressed in the last post toward McCain's blatantly false complaint about Obama's use of a common phrase is basically my emotional, gut-level urge to see McCain fail this November. But I feel it is my duty to give at least a few practical reasons why I refuse to vote for McCain:

1. Obama's going to be better for me on tax cuts. Both parties have tax plans on their platforms, and Obama's is better than McCain's covering my tax bracket: Obama's offering to give me 5 to 6 percent off while McCain is offering 1 to 3 percent. Just check the graph.
   The Tax Policy Center that provided info for that graph has done the review on the two tax plans, and has found Obama's plan is better for the lower- and middle-income classes.
2. If McCain does indeed win in November, I have to posit: WHERE will he get his candidates to fill key positions in his administration? WHO will make up his Cabinet, his Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, Interior, Education, Attorney General? Answer: McCain will fill his Cabinet with people from the Bush Administration. Where else is he going to find people from his party with *any* level of experience in an executive work setting? McCain says he'll put Democrats in his Cabinet, but odds are he's only going with one, his old buddy Lieberman (possibly for State). Everyone else is going to end up coming from a Bush the Lesser administration that has been filled from bottom-up with borderline quacks, unqualified hacks, and cronyist crooks (caveat: current Sec. of Defense Gates has shown some skills, but he was pretty much forced on a Bush team suffering from the 2006 setbacks and political pressure worried about the worsening Iraq occupation). If Obama wins, yes he'll probably add people from the last Democratic admin - the Clintons. But review the Clinton years: other than Housing Secretary Cisneros, what other problems were there with other appointees? Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy went to trial, yes, but that trial was a sham and he was acquitted on all charges. And I'm not going to focus on the conspiracy talks about Commerce Secretary Brown... The biggest scandals with the Clinton White House involved the Clintons themselves, rarely their Cabinet or other appointees. Between the Republican talent pool and the Democratic talent pool, I'll take the Dems to fill the next White House jobs, please!!!
3. Simply put, McCain is going to continue wars. He's doing too much saber-rattling at Russia and Iran, and not convincing me he's going to do anything about lessening our troop presence in Iraq nor resolving the disaster Afghanistan (and Pakistan) has become.

Those are just three legit reasons I can't vote for McCain. My passionate emotional reason for not voting McCain (HE'S TURNED INTO A GODDAMN LIAR) is the trump card, naturally.

The point where McCain lost me

Edit from seven years later:

whatever image this was, it's lost.

I will fit something else here to pass the time.

This is another moment where McCain burned a bridge: where he told Letterman he had to race back to DC for a budget crisis, only for Dave to find out that McCain actually went to the news studio to sit in for another interview.  People don't like to get blown off like that, Senator...

Winners and Losers of Super Tuesday

Winner: John McCain. He jumped from a slight lead to a massive lead in the delegate counts. Between both parties, McCain is the one certain frontrunner. Momentum is his, the aura of inevitable victory is his. He is now bound to get more party support, more voters flocking to his banner. And the early math regarding the remaining states suggests he has smooth sailing from here on in. What really clinched his victory, nicely enough, was an early loss on the day: West Virginia. In that state, they hold a convention rather than a primary, and the first round of convention voting went 40 percent Romney, 31 percent Huckabee, 10 percent McCain, and laughable for Ron Paul. A supposed (rumor alert) quick round of phone calls later, and nearly all of McCain's votes went to Huckabee, giving him enough votes to beat Romney. As a calculated move, it was brilliant: it kept Romney, McCain's major rival, from winning a solidly conservative state that could have improved Mitt's "Conservative" appearance, while giving a real Conservative Huckabee a victory in a state that didn't have many delegates riding on it. No wonder it left Romney's people sputtering and screaming conspiracy: it hurt them more than it hurt McCain.

Loser: Mitt Romney. Yes, he won states. But he won the states he was expected to win (Utah, Mass., even Colorado). And he lost the states he needed (California, Cali, Hollywoodland, the Big One). What really hurt him was that he lost big in the solidly Red States, ahem, the big Southeast states. He didn't even place second in Alabama or Georgia or Tennessee. Having already lost South Carolina and Florida, Romney is not impressing anyone where the Republicans maintain their voting base. And this is despite nearly all of the major "conservative" pundits like Limbaugh and Coulter trying to prop Romney up (or to tear McCain down). There are a lot of GOP voters who aren't buying what Romney is selling.

Winner: The Democratic Party. Okay, the general election isn't even here yet. There's 5-6 more months to go before the convention. There's still two heavy-hitting candidates punching each other for the title belt in a fight that's gotten messy and could get worse. But the good news is that the voters are turning out in droves for the Democrats. If you look from state to state that had shared Primaries between the D and the R, there was double the turnout for the Dems than for the Reps. And the Republicans have more at stake than the Democrats: The Republicans still have 3 major choices to choose from (let's face it, Ron Paul is one step away from calling up Ross Perot about borrowing the Reform Party for a few months). You'd think with the Dems' choices down to two, there would be fewer voters taking a stake: You'd think with the Republicans still campaigning hard with three choices there'd be more voters wanting to have their say. But this is in conjunction with the census numbers of registered voters showing a 50-35 Democrat-to-Republican body count: there are simply now more registered Dems than Republicans. And the Democrats are more enthused with their choices: most voters don't have a problem with their opposite candidate winning (71 percent of Obama's will vote for Hillary if they must; 72 percent of Hillary's will voter for Obama if he wins). Compare that with the Republicans, who are splitting rather nastily between McCain and Romney and Huckabee.

Loser: Obama's Momentum. Statistically, it was a draw between Hillary and Obama last night. They mostly split the states down the middle, almost Solomon-like. Hillary could claim victory because she won more of the larger states (Cali, Mass) and got more delegates. And Obama could claim victory for winning in states he wasn't polling in two weeks earlier, as well as winning in states where Hillary's chances are not that good (the South outside of Arkansas and Florida). However, Obama did poorly in California, and worse yet did poorly in Massachusetts. The entire Kennedy clan was backing him, fer crissakes: when was the last time that state didn't answer fawningly to the Kennedys' whims? As for the Big Mo, Clinton still looks formidable, and while Obama's caught up to her in the polling numbers she still gathered more numbers to herself (taking more of Edwards' lost support than Obama has). Obama still has a major obstacle (or twelve) to overcome. It's now down to Ohio and Texas, and who can win those states...

Loser: The Kennedys and their home state. My God. Massachusetts voted for Clinton. What the hell is wrong with that state?!?!

Loser: the Conservative Mainstream Media Elites. They don't like McCain. It's that obvious. They also can't understand why most Republican voters are backing McCain, which is risky (for them and their wallets). Ann Coulter's always been more on the fringe, having alienated a few too many fellow Conservatives, but Rush Limbaugh is starting to look waaaay out-of-touch with the average Republican. What do you think could happen if the voters keep siding with McCain come November? Will the talking heads swallow their pride and calmly back the party's candidate, or will they continue to blast him and end up alienating their own audiences?

Loser: the people who want a One Day Primary. Dammit! Are we the only ones who notice how convoluted and inconsistent the whole damn mess is?!?!