Those who forget history...

[elfs]

McCain also expressed problems with the notion of sitting down with Iran and Syria, saying, "I don't believe that a peace conference with people who are dedicated to your extinction has much short-term gain."

Yeah, like we never did that before. Ever. It never had any gain at all. We never once talked to the Soviets at all between 1946 and 1989. Never, ever, ever. Because doing so was assumed by everyone to be fruitless.

I mean, is McCain pulling out all the stops and becoming just a demagogic mouthpiece, or what? Matt Welch believes he is:

Sifting through McCain's four bestselling books and nearly three decades of work on Capitol Hill, a distinct approach toward governance begins to emerge. McCain, it turns out, wants to restore your faith in the U.S. government by any means necessary, even if that requires thousands of more military deaths, national service for civilians and federal micromanaging of innumerable private transactions. He'll kick down the doors of boardroom and bedroom, mixing Democrats' nanny-state regulations with the GOP's red-meat paternalism in a dangerous brew of government activism.

Comments

This doesn't seem very useful.

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

What good does it do to suppose that a man who has demonstrated great political talent, education, and experience is stupid, ignorant, and naive?

Wouldn't it be more effective to at least consider the possibility, if only for the sake of argument, that John McCain is right about some things, or at least worth taking seriously-- and then put our effort into figuring out exactly why we disagree with him?

Certainly we need to calibrate for the man's political ambitions. Islam is unpopular among American voters, so McCain goes too far in dismissing opportunities for negotiating. But it's undoubtedly true that McCain would indeed negotiate with Iran, Syria, or Al Qaeda itself if he thought it would benefit the United States.

It's specifically ridiculous to imply that McCain has forgotten about the gains to be had from negotiating with our nation's enemies, given that he saw immediate and direct personal benefits (both short term and long term) from our peace talks with North Vietnam while he was a prisoner there-- you can be sure he remembers that.

If McCain is using such rhetoric to be a "mouthpiece," then whose mouthpiece is he? Seriously, do you believe McCain is working for anyone but himself? That he's pushing anyone else's view of what this country ought to be?

Welch's pile of editorial crap is deliberately deceitful and unworthy of serious consideration. It's nothing more than an attempt at character assassination. Welch can't even find much wrong with anything McCain has actually said or done; he merely claims that McCain might do bad things in the future. The paragraph you quote would be repudiated instantly by McCain, if he even deigned to notice it. McCain risked his life in Viet Nam, and has dedicated his life since then, to fighting the very evils Welch claims he would perpetrate if elected.

And I say all of that in spite of the fact that I don't agree with McCain on most issues. I don't support him and I wouldn't ever vote for him. He has a lot of serious faults, but nothing here or in Welch's spew properly addresses any of the faults I see, so I feel obliged to argue for treating the man more fairly.

And I also believe in conducting political discussions in a way that might actually benefit the reader, instead of just setting up cartoon stereotypes so they can be knocked down. What's the point of that?

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