Bygones
Barack Obama, acting with class and good sense, has been reaching out to John McCain going so far as to host a bipartisan dinner in his honor over the weekend at which he said:
And there are few Americans who understand this need for common purpose and common effort better than John McCain. It is what he has strived for and achieved throughout his life. It is built into the very content of his character.
I could stand here and recite the long list of John’s bipartisan accomplishments. Campaign finance reform. Immigration. The Patients’ Bill of Rights. All those times he has crossed the aisle and risked the ire of his party for the good of his country. And yet, what makes John such a rare and courageous public servant is not the accomplishments themselves, but the true motivation behind them.
I’m all for Obama making this gesture, but personally I don’t believe a word of it. I also don’t believe in saying things about people during the campaign season that you don’t really mean and then taking it all back after the fact. And I think the truest test of John McCain’s character as a public official was his conduct during the 2008 campaign, not his behavior during lower-stakes tests. This blog follows the legal restrictions put in place by McCain’s ill-advised Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act and thus does not comment on the character, qualifications, or fitness for office of electoral candidates but McCain’s substantive legislative achievements are actually hugely unimpressive.
45 Responses to “Bygones”
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January 21st, 2009 at 8:44 am
That hangover headache must really hurt, Matthew. heh heh
But even drunk as a fiddler’s bitch, your instincts are sound.
I think Obama is a fool if he doesn’t beware of Republicans bearing gifts.
Just as I predicted last night, The legitimacy of Obama’s Presidency is already being questioned in the Washington Post because of that little trap Chief Justice Roberts laid for him yesterday:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/20/AR2009012004482.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR
January 21st, 2009 at 8:45 am
I could stand here and recite the long list of John’s bipartisan accomplishments. Campaign finance reform. Immigration. The Patients’ Bill of Rights.
Accomplishments?
January 21st, 2009 at 8:47 am
I mean, two of those didn’t even pass, and the third has been thoroughly gutted by the courts.
January 21st, 2009 at 8:51 am
Following the dictum of “a hair of the dog that bit you”, I offer up this fur-ball to ease your suffering.
A very right wing online newspaper kicks the shit out of George W Bush far better than anything I’ve seen from those pussies in the Democratic Caucus:
“Bush’s Legacy: Conservatives were Betrayed” –
http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/bush_requiem/2009/01/19/173041.html
“Bush Bequeathed Trillions in Deficits, Economy in Chaos” -
http://www.newsmax.com/index.html
January 21st, 2009 at 8:53 am
And so the truest test of Obama was his behavior during the campaign?
In that case you’ll have to agree that we have a new lying scheming racist and corrupt POTUS who happens to also be a war criminal for his continued support of America’s illegal wars.
And one fairly inarticulate when not reading from a teleprompter as demonstrated by his flubbing of the oath.
Geez!
Get used to rediscovering the big clay clodhoppers on your Savior.
And by the by McCain has certainly done far more for our nation than Barry has accomplished even if we do grant BO his insane inclination to equate his “community organizing” with true courage and sacrifice.
January 21st, 2009 at 8:57 am
PUMA roar!
(That paranoid, little screed has *got* to be PUMA, deranged wingnuts don’t fluff McCain)
January 21st, 2009 at 9:00 am
Re JT’s comment “And one fairly inarticulate when not reading from a teleprompter as demonstrated by his flubbing of the oath.
Geez!
Get used to rediscovering the big clay clodhoppers on your Savior.”
————-
Is that you, Hillary?
Why don’t you get some coffee for Joe and the guys?
January 21st, 2009 at 9:01 am
mccain’s not a candidate for electoral office now, right?
so what’s with the ‘legal restrictions’ verbiage?
if you want to blow mccain out of the water for being a small-minded, unprincipled, race-baiting, dim-witted, war-mongering, two-faced opportunist, how would that violate restrictions against commenting on candidates for electoral office *now*?
January 21st, 2009 at 9:04 am
man, the right wing still can’t find any honest criticisms of obama, so they resort to lies once again.
look, jt, everybody who has seen the tape sees that bush’s boy john roberts is the one who flubbed, and obama tried to accommodate him out of politeness.
is this *really* the best stuff you’ve got against obama? the manifestly false claim that he flubbed a line, which everyone with a tv or youtube can see is false?
as ta-nehisi would say, that’s some pretty sorry weak sauce.
January 21st, 2009 at 9:09 am
I am with you as far as the “true test” issue is concerned. Also, I am less than completely sure that Obama means what he says here. But I would like to note that, to my knoweldge, nothing he said during the campaign contradicts what he said here. He repeatedly, even during the debates and his nomination speech, admitted McCain’s “bipartisan accomplishments”, of which, by the way, I am of similar opinion as you.
January 21st, 2009 at 9:09 am
The funniest thing was the pundits talking about how McCain will be Obama’s point man with Republicans on foreign policy. Foreign policy? Climate change, maybe, but foreign policy? Did they and do they not understand that Obama and John “1000 years” McCain do not agree at all on foreign policy?
January 21st, 2009 at 9:16 am
Don reminds us that JT left “sexist” out of his indictment.
January 21st, 2009 at 9:16 am
RE Rob’s comment “Did they and do they not understand that Obama and John “1000 years” McCain do not agree at all on foreign policy?”
What’s worse, McCain and the Republicans don’t agree on foreign policy.
For one thing, the oil reservoirs will run dry well before a 1000 years. At that point, the Republicans will “spread Democracy” somewhere else.
January 21st, 2009 at 9:44 am
Re JT
Just for the information of lying fascist goat fucking asshole JT, it was the murdering rapist Chief Justice Roberts who flubbed.
January 21st, 2009 at 9:44 am
This is a little harsh, IMHO. The Kennedy-McCain immigration bill was a very good one, as I understand it, and would have been very important if passed.
January 21st, 2009 at 9:50 am
Re John McCain
Maybe President Osams is trying to resurrect the Senator McCain of 2000.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:04 am
Matthew, this is a brilliant example of praeteritio. Praeteritio is my favourite!
January 21st, 2009 at 10:06 am
Re Don Williams
It is possible that the blogs resident Bolshevik and paranoid is correct that the Chief Justice was zinging President Osama for voting against confirming him. On the other hand, perhaps there is a positive inference here. Recall that the Chief Justice has some sort of seizure a few months ago. Maybe this is an indication that the problem was more serious then reported at the time and his flubbing of the oath is a symptom of it and that it is an ongoing problem. We can always hope.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:08 am
Narcissism being McCain’s primary personality trait, the smoke-up-the-ass treatment will probably help us at some point.
Also, praising McCain no longer sets up a “bi-partisan” candidate, as it did for the past 12 years.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:13 am
Don’t forget…McCain is honorable. He loves boxing. Hates mixed martial arts. That’s honor for ya.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:31 am
I think the truest test of John McCain’s character as a public official was his conduct during the 2008 campaign, not his behavior during lower-stakes tests.
Well yes. But McCain’s still a senior Senator with substantial influence, and if Obama needs to stroke his ego to get his agenda through the Senate, by all means let’s pretend the McCain is a bipartisan hero.
I do like how Obama’s continued touting of McCain as “bipartisan” sets McCain up to either back Obama or repudiate the praise that’s being lavished upon him.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:32 am
So, engaging in a little po-mo deconstructionism, we learn that Obama is a liar and Feingold is a fool.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:51 am
Obama may not have meant a word of it, and McCain probably didn’t believe a word of it, but like Hollywood, Washington DC is all about the grand gesture. I’m certain it was appreciated. Obama may get a lot of mileage out of that luncheon.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:57 am
It is no suprise that you would not believe “the changer” when he reaches out to a former advesary in order to forge a working relationship.
As a blogger you don’t have to get along with anyone, since you don’t have to do anything but express your opinion. Us in the real world who have to work with people on a daily basis, sometimes must put differences aside in order to get something done.
To paraphrase Gordon Gecko who is now a blogger “Gridlock is good”.
January 21st, 2009 at 11:16 am
“I also don’t believe in saying things about people during the campaign season that you don’t really mean and then taking it all back after the fact.”
did you never hear of being kind to the loser? i’m not sure O said anything during the campaign that contradicts–in the literal sense–what he said here, but even if so, so what?
i would vote against mr. mccain for almost any office you could name, but i would not seek to pound him after losing.
george bush, on the other hand, MUST be driven down in the country’s estimation. he represents exactly what we must purge from our character and behavior, and this takes public discussion, criticism, remorse, anger, analysis, and so on. loud, humiliating criticism, actually, repeated until remembered.
but mccain? eh.
January 21st, 2009 at 11:44 am
i don’t think y’all understand the my man obama. obama realizes that the campaign showcased the worst in mccain, but he also realizes above all he needs help getting shit done in the senate. the easiest and quickest way to coopt mccain into the obama strategy was to do this luncheon. photo-ops. time on cnn and fox news and the take away is “these guys are good guys”
remember the republican party doesn’t want anything to do with mccain anymore. and all mccain wants in the end is to feel important. so obama has taken an enemy and turned him into an asset. politics 101 baby
January 21st, 2009 at 12:29 pm
This blog follows the legal restrictions put in place by McCain’s ill-advised Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act…
Glad to read you use the term “ill-advised.”
January 21st, 2009 at 12:39 pm
What the hell is wrong with you people?
Were you in a coma since November 5th?
The Democratic “leadership” has been displaying more backbone in the last two months over Obama’s appointments than they have in the last 8 years of Bush raping the economy, government and Constitution. In addition, Obama has to deal with the Blue Dog’s, who just so happens to love McCain. The Mainstream Media loves McCain and covered for him during the election. And of course, you have that non-28%er Republicans who still like McCain for his work over the last 8 years.
So he stokes McCain’s ego at no cost to himself, McCain owes Obama more than what he owes the GOP. Obama breaks the GOP into the McCain vs. Palin factions to further divide the party.
And we’ve just finished up 8 years of petty score settling and you want more of that? Obama is acting like a gracious winner. He’s acting with character. This is one more reason to be proud of the man.
How soon will the liberal blogsphere turn into whargarbl.
January 21st, 2009 at 12:41 pm
This blog follows the legal restrictions put in place by McCain’s ill-advised Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act…
I’m not sure if that’s snark, or a real restriction placed by your employer. But surely it can’t actually be the law? By that standard, no one could spend more than $2300 to critize any politician. How then did the swift-boaters get away with slandering John Kerry?
January 21st, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Wrong. McCain hated mma, but now that Budweiser sponsors the ufc, he is just fine with it. Various Zuffa officials donating large amounts of money to his campaign probably didn’t make him feel worse about the sport either.
Regardless, Obama is doing what he did with Hillary. Hopefully it works, bipartisanship is further fetishized, and we get to eliminate torture/rendition/etc. Perhaps even a sane immigration policy is possible.
January 21st, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Don’t take this as concern trolling, but I’m wondering what the difference is: Obama lies after the election(or so we theorize) to gain McCain’s support for political purpose advancing his agenda. McCain lies for political purpose to get elected.
Is the difference that McCain was saying negative things about other people or that he was advocating for a political agenda that is despicable? What if McCain lied during his campaign, smearing Obama and appealing to the worst instincts of his party, but then ruled as the honorable, honest, non-partisan moderate that he claimed to be? Obviously, I’d prefer a real liberal, but wouldn’t I have to respect him a little (and certainly greatly prefer him to Bush, right)?
Ultimately, if you like Obama as a politician, I think you are implicitly accepting political expediency as okay. This means, to me at least, that you have to evaluate politicians primarily on the actual impact of their records in congress or office and secondarily on the impact of their remarks in terms of their political consequences, but not on the simple basis of policies they only claim to support (as say during a campaign). As such, I don’t see how we can substantially criticize McCain for his campaign remarks (except insofar as you would argue that they will have consequences, like mobilizing the Palin faction of the party or what have you). Also, and kind of ironically, you have to regard the theoretical McCain model of a politician as a straight shooting, straight talker, as a bad politician to support, since straight talking at the cost of political expediency is a bad thing.
January 21st, 2009 at 2:37 pm
At issue is that McCain didn’t even begin to match up to his theoretical model. McCain 2000 was a conservative politician in my father’s mold. McCain 2008 ditched whatever of the 2000 persona he needed to to get elected, and it was so blatant that a voter couldn’t really know what s/he was getting for their vote. He might have been marginally preferable to Bush, but who really knew?
January 21st, 2009 at 2:50 pm
34: But then we’re actually holding him accountable for his political behavior while in office, not his statements during the campaign, right? I just think its inaccurate to criticize a politician for lying if you think that political expediency is a good justification for stuff. Lying appears to be frequently politically expedient, even in the pursuit of noble ends.
January 21st, 2009 at 4:50 pm
mpowell, you sure seem to be trolling. Complimenting somebody that you don’t like isn’t lying, it’s grace. Obama’s being gracious.
McCain, on the other hand, was slandering Obama during the campaign, as well as telling people that he would do things that he certainly wouldn’t actually do (pandering).
I think you’re also confusing political expedience. It’s really only bad when, for example, you pass an inferior stimulus package because it’s easier to do. Trying to get people who disagree with you to trust you isn’t political expedience, it’s POLITICS.
January 21st, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Well, the people who voted for McCain can’t play the victim card.
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