What These Eyes Have Seen
Once McCain smells corruption, he does not let go. When he began investigating Boeing for what he regarded as a sweetheart deal with the Air Force to lease tankers, it turned out that Boeing had broken the law by hiring a former Air Force procurement officer who had worked on the tanker contract. McCain relentlessly badgered the Pentagon, holding up Air Force promotions until the Defense Department produced some allegedly inculpatory e-mails. The Pentagon balked and McCain wound up in the office of the then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, yelling at the top of his lungs, say a Pentagon official and an adviser to Rumsfeld who declined to be identified discussing a confidential meeting. McCain seemed to believe that Rumsfeld had impugned his patriotism, an unpardonable insult in McCain's world view. Mark Salter, a longtime adviser, denies the incident happened. "He never yelled at Rumsfeld," says Salter. "He bruised him up in committee hearings, but he never yelled at him."
McCain may have a bit of a vindictive streak. "John has an enemies list longer than Nixon's," says a former Pentagon official who did not want to get on it. "And, unlike Nixon, McCain really does try to get you." After the Boeing scandal, three Air Force officials who quit all found that one of McCain's top aides had quietly spread word around the defense community that anyone hiring them would risk the senator's displeasure. And he still has an impetuosity that is nervous-making to old foreign-policy hands. One of them, a former high official in several Republican administrations who occasionally advises McCain (and wishes to continue to) worries to NEWSWEEK about McCain's "quirky" judgment and his unwillingness to change his mind once it's made up.
McCain will trim his sails politically when necessary, but he is obviously dispirited by anything that smacks of pandering. A year ago he was the front runner, claiming the mantle of the Republican establishment and hoping to inherit the Bush fund-raising machine. But when his fund-raising stalled, he dumped some of his top campaign staff and wound up in the role of maverick once again, pushing from the outside. McCain claims that staff shake-ups are nothing new to presidential campaigns (true) and that he lost support among conservatives because he favored a compromise on immigration. In early 2007, when some of his advisers tried to get him to soften his stances on immigration and Iraq, he snapped, "Don't try to change my mind," says a former aide who wished to avoid McCain's wrath by remaining anonymous.
It was a characteristically principled stand, and yet McCain's leadership skills are called into question by the near meltdown of his campaign. "Nobody knew who the boss was," says one of McCain's longtime friends and advisers, who declined to be named discussing the internal workings of the campaign. "You couldn't get people to return your calls. It was bad." More troubling, says this associate, was McCain's blind eye to the problem. "He didn't really seem to want to deal with it."
Last summer McCain told NEWSWEEK that he was "never quite comfortable being the front runner, per se." A half a year later, having passed the true test of winning the Republicans-only primary in Florida, he is once again the front runner. "Whoops! Trouble!" cackled McCain last week as he mordantly contemplated prosperity. The campaign cash is flowing in again; he and his aides joked about no more cheap motels as they enjoyed the plush surroundings of their Beverly Hills hotel suite. McCain, who never attained the stars and bars worn by his father and grandfather, has a real chance to become commander in chief. He will no doubt do everything in his power to keep the faith of his fathers. It will be a struggle. It always has been.
With Pat Wingert, Holly Bailey, John Barry, Michael Hirsh, Karen Breslau and Suzanne Smalley
© 2008
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Member Comments
Posted By: cowen123456 @ 09/30/2008 12:01:19 PM
Comment: I;ve watched the elections for over a year now and I still have not seen anything to disprove the view that John Mccain is a do-er and Obama is a talker.
Posted By: Nins @ 09/18/2008 9:41:31 PM
Comment: Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, AIG and the rest of the failed institutions have failed primarily because of former Senator Phil Gramm. The Gramm-Leach-Biley Act stripped away the regulations separating banking from investment companies, insurance companies and mortgage guaranty companies. Those regulations were added after the Great Depression when it became obvious that allowing banks to be in bed with the stock market was a sure way to rig the system to collapse, as it did in 1929.
Lo an behold, a few years after the regulations were removed, the sh!t has hit the fan, and the inter-related investment, insurance, mortgage and banking industries are now starting to collapse, and guess what, you, the taxpayer will have to pay to clean it up.
Phil Gramm is the Senator who brought you the "Enron Loophole" that de-regulated futures trading, causing the prices of oil, gas and food to spiral out of control.
Senator Phil Gramm was McCain's top economic advisor until recently, when he was forced to step down after he said that there is no problem with our economy other than a "mental recession" on the part of a "nation of whiners." Phil Gramm is the man who McCain said he wants to name Secretary of the Treasury if he becomes President. You have to believe John McCain when he says that he knows little about the economy -- so little that he doesn't even know who to choose as an advisor.
Barack Obama addressed the Enron Loophole, futures trading, short-selling and Wall Street de-regulation months ago in his economic position papers, which are available on his website. Obama has been saying all along that he is going to put in strict regulations and clean up Wall Street.
McCain just started saying that he favors regulation in the past couple of weeks. How is it that McCain is going to put in new regulations, when he plans to appoint Phil Gramm, the man who caused the de-regulation, as Secretary of the Treasury? McCain says he would fire Christopher Cox, the SEC Chairman, to solve the problem. However, the problem is caused by lack of regulations on the legislative level, regulations that were removed before Cox was appointed. The SEC can only enforce regulations that actually exist, so making a scapegoat of Cox solves nothing. I would suggest that McCain is guilty of saying what's politically expedient, that he does not actually intend to regulate the banking industry. McCain knows that most Americans are unaware of the details.
I am a middle-aged white conservative Republican who loves America. I am voting for Barack Obama.
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/15050.html
http://www.newsweek.com/id/145011/page/1
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6007788.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E0D81038F934A25752C0A9649C8B63
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stateupdates/gG5Rzb
Posted By: LindseyW @ 09/08/2008 1:17:22 PM
Comment: It makes me nervous how mccain can't talk about the issues and is only ever talking about this pow stuff. It's like he can't think about anything but war. I can't vote for someone who thinks war is so romantic and loves it because it gave him an identity as a hero as he calls himself. He will only start more wars if he becomes president so he can relive the old days and work out his mental problems from being a pow. Not only that but his Vietnam stories keep on changing, like he is remembering new ones all the time. I think reality has gotten mixed up with fantasy as he admits in the article he created a fantasy world for himself and now I think he is doing it again with this persona he is pushing. It is scary that he still has so many issues about his time as a pow that he wants to demand that we elect him president to pay him back for his service even though other guys were pows too. It's like mccain is always so angry about something. I think he is still resentful about his capture because he seems to want to make it harder for other vets as he keeps voting against anything that could help them. I am uneasy about all this pow stuff because it reminds me of Bush-if you don't vote for me you're not patriotic. Maybe he still has issues like the psychiatrist said he doesn't want to live in his father's shadow so he wants to become president because it is more than being an admiral. I can't vote for someone who is always living in the past. Mccain said he doesn't even know how to work a computer, he is like Frankenstein with fire about anything new.