A Democratic Starter Guide to Showing the Voters that John McCain Has No Clothes [View All]

[McCamy Taylor]

Scary thought, I know.

I feel sorry for the DU posters who scrape the bottom of the barrel, looking for nasty things to say about our fine presidential candidates, anyone of whom would make a great executive for this country. We have it pretty good when we are being asked to pick between perfection and perfection-lite.

Look at the poor Republicans. Their candidate select was caught playing footsies with Roger Aisles, which made him unacceptable to the rest of the corporate media, so the GOP had to settle for that old party standby, John McCain, the man whom everyone had written off a year ago.

It isn’t as if the Republicans have to win this fall’s presidential election. But if they do not, Bush and Cheney could be tried for criminal activity they committed while in office (since Bush will have a hard time pardoning himself). Karl Rove will be remembered for losing two elections, this one and 2006, which is against the Geneva Convention, I think, as cruel an unusual punishment for those with inflated egos. The health insurance and pharmaceutical industries will suffer big blows as the nation finally gets comprehensive health reform (that they have managed to stall for 15 year, at the cost of who knows how many lives). The telecommunications industry will lose its lucrative blackmail racket, aka domestic spying. Big oil will no longer control foreign and domestic policy, and therefore the price of oil will no longer be artificially propped up to give Exxon outrageous profits. The FDA and other agencies will start doing their jobs again, forcing companies to obey federal laws. The list goes on and on.

There is a lot at stake. So, the usual corporate suspects are hard at work dressing John McCain up as a “winner” nine months before the general election, while the Democrats are still giddy with glee engaging in their ritual preconvention food fights.

I am going to suggest (humbly) that we divide our time between supporting our candidates and reminding the nation exactly why John McCain is a laughable choice for president—before they start believing that there is something behind the façade which the slick RNC pr people are crafting.

Luckily, there is a wealth of material to work with.

First, a few ground rules. John McCain is a war hero . Therefore, he should never he attacked on character issues. That means no John McCain is a Waffler even though he is. No John McCain is old though he is. Instead, refer to actions, statements, concrete facts, and use language which is as precise and as clinical as possible. Try to start out with John McCain is a respected war hero who did a great service for his country, but ….

Never ever suggest that he is shell shocked, suffering from PTSD or is in any other way impaired from being a Vietnam War Veteran and POW. Bush got a free ride from the press when he did it. Democrats will be crucified if they even mention this. Be aware that Karl Rove and Co. may go online at DU and other sites posing as Democrats trying to start threads in which they talk about these issues in an ugly way in order to get other Dems to do the same. Don’t go there! Instead, challenge these posters . Declare them to be the Republican agitators that they are. Remember that the protester who suggest breaking the law is always the undercover police officer.

Ok, now that the ground rules have been laid, here are some of McCain's most obvious weaknesses as a candidate in no particular order

I.His Own Party Hated Him (Before They Tolerated Him): This is going to provide endless opportunities for sound bites, YouTube Videos, campaign ads that can be tailored for certain parts of the country. For instance, if he is now endorsed by a Georgia state representative who called him “as liberal as Hillary Clinton” one year ago, that is going to be in the TV ad in Georgia.

Here is an example from Brave New Films . It is called Less Jobs. More War. It is just one of several YouTube videos created by Robert Greenwald. It quotes Joe Scarborough (Boy. Are his bosses at General Electric going to be mad at him now that they are under orders from the Pentagon to support McCain)

http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/28359-what-is-this-iraq-war-charge-on-my-bill


II.Foot in Mouth Disease “100 years” of war in Iraq “It would be fine with me and I hope it would be fine with you.” ‘Nuff said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFknKVjuyNk



III.Never Call It “Waffles” In 2000, McCain called Falwell and Robertson “agents of intolerance”. Instead of “waffles” which smacks of a Karl Rove dirty trick, I suggest using a nice nonjudgmental, clinical sounding phrase like McCain is inconsistent or McCain changes his views to reflect those of his audience . This will set up an excellent contrast with Hillary, if she is the nominee, since she can point to her 15 year quest for universal health care. Even the fact that she never apologized for her vote on Iraq (despite tremendous pressure from within her own party)becomes a positive here.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2000/02/29/bush.2.t_9.php

Senator John McCain, in a provocative and politically risky speech, sharply criticized leaders of the religious right on Monday as "agents of intolerance" allied to his rival, Governor George W. Bush, and denounced what he said were the tactics of "division and slander."
Specifically, Mr. McCain singled out the evangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as "corrupting influences on religion and politics" and said parts of the religious right were divisive and even un-American.

Now, here is McCain being interviewed by Tim Russert in 2006, declaring that Falwell is not an agent of intolerance with an insert clip of McCain back in 2000 saying the opposite. McCain’s justification for his view change? The religious right has a lot of clout within the Republican Party. Oh my! What a conciliatory kind of guy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8KZpsp04XM

There are too many examples of McCain’s inconsistency for me to cite them all. He has “waffled” on abortion, tax cuts, campaign finance reform, torture. There is almost no principle that this man has not abandoned in his quest for a vote.

Here is an excellent compilation from Robert Greenwald and the folks who brought you “More War. Less Jobs” above. The DoubleTalk Express Catchy title. That might stick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioy90nF2anI&feature=related


IV.Candidate in a Box: No, not that kind of box. I mean that John McCain’s handlers will attempt to keep him out of the public eye, because he is his own worst advertisement, especially if his opponent is Obama. MSNBC already uses this strategy, with one notable exception, the night KO was on and the network showed Obama speaking to 17000 adoring fans followed by McCain speaking to a handful of bored supporters, and it became clear that Obama makes McCain look like an agent of despair.

Just because the GOP will concentrate on patriotic ads that feature anything but their candidate, that does not mean that Democrats can not find video footage of McCain uttering some of his more memorable lines and playing them as part of Democratic television ads. This is where amateur filmmakers can come in. Remember how we got lucky in Virginia against one of the GOP’s rising stars and took him down thanks to his little “macaca” slip of the tongue?

Here is a famous piece of footage, McCain speaking in Michigan. This is the talk in which he utters the classic downer line about those jobs that “are not coming back.” Notice how the applause ceases. Also note McCain’s posture, which is slumped, the pressured way that he speaks, as if he is nervous about running out of time. He does not appear to be self confident, like either Obama or Hillary. He does not interact with the crowd. He struggles to keep himself on subject. His tone is almost panicked. This panic conveys itself to the audience, which does not hear a speech full of optimism about the future. Instead, they hear that the past was glorious but the future is uncertain. If McCain can not do any better than this, his handlers will have to keep him away from the public completely, or else do what they do with W., only let him speak before select audiences on certain topics for limited periods of time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAM5y2EsXnc&feature=related

V.Is His VP Presidential Material? Face it. When your candidate is over 70, and when he has been treated for a form of cancer which can kill years after it is diagnosed and treated, his Vice President becomes more than just window dressing.

That means that John McCain can not select Huckabee to be his running mate in order to gain the support of the Christian Coalition. If he does, the non-Christian Coalition will start asking the question What happens when President McCain becomes incapacitated and we have President Reverend Huckabee? . He will have to pick someone with firm conservative credentials but without too many ties to Bush and someone who will not scare the majority of Americans. Texas Governor Rick Perry would make conservatives happy, but he is just Bush-lite. Mitt Romney is still a Mormon. Assuming that either of these two would agree to run with someone who is likely to lose. In contrast, the Democratic nominee will have a wide number of VP candidates to choose from---Richardson, Clarke just to name two. He might be better off going with Huckabee, since Mike is great with crowds and inspires optimism. They could send him out on the trail to do all the actual campaigning and hope that no one notices that he is not qualified to be commander-in-chief.

This may sound like overkill, but do not underestimate the greed or the resources of those who will combine their efforts to catapult poor John McCain into the White House. They have at their disposal:

1. The Pentagon which is already beginning to portray the War in Iraq as “winnable” and the surge as a “success” and interrogation as “kinder and gentler” and Gitmo as “a great place to visit for the weekend”. Although the military has been adamant so far about resisting Bush-Cheney efforts to draw us into conflict with Iran, if the generals can be persuaded that it will improve John McCain’s chances of getting elected, they might even agree to some (limited) military engagement with that country.
2. NBC/General Electric which will do the bidding of its biggest customer the Pentagon. Viacom/CBS, NewsCorp/Fox, The Tribune Co, all of which need a Republican FCC to keep their illegal media empires together. The Washington Post and a faction at the NYT which are NeoCon. These will be stumping for McCain.
3. Grover Norquist, Karl Rove and all the usual RNC dirty tricks experts like Swiftboat Vets for Lies.
4. Big money from people like Big Oil, Big Insurance, Big Pharm. (Dems should ignore efforts to get them to accept public financing. McCain could accept public financing and then have his campaign run solely on the free advertising he will get from the corporate media plus Swiftboat type groups).
5. The White House will attempt to suppress Democratic voters and help tamper with election results. They will also artificially “improve” economic indicators to deceive the public about how bad things are. They will also indict Democrats all across the country, to make Dems look corrupt.

So, never make the mistake of feeling sorry for McCain. The “straight talker” is going to be using all of these illegal, immoral resources to subvert the democratic process, because, as Hunter S. Thompson put it so eloquently, once a sane politician gets a whiff of the White House, he turns into a bull elk in rut.

And that is a scary thought when the bull elk in rut is John McCain.