I don’t know how The New Republic can possibly take themselves seriously. Jon Chait uses his column space today to talk about why he loves John McCain and has pangs of affinity for the old codger. He actually constructed the following sentence:
And, in the years immediately following that run [2000], McCain established himself as perhaps the country’s foremost progressive champion.
It’s hard to believe that anyone, of any political persuasion, would write such a thing. It’s clear that Jon Chait hasn’t the slightest clue what a progressive is. There’s no accounting for taste, but this next bit is equally appalling:
Yes, people put far too much stock in the candidates’ personalities. (I’d vote for an obnoxious, pampered phony who shared my beliefs over a charming war hero who didn’t.) But personality isn’t completely meaningless, either. A president sets the tone for our public discourse, and McCain is pretty easy to take. His demagoguery comes with an awkward forced smile, which doesn’t make it more forgivable but does make it less irritating.
This is the same man that frightens his Republican colleagues in the Senate with his bad temper, who publicly called his wife a c*nt and a trollop, and who likes to make jokes about women enjoying rape. ‘Charming’ and ‘easy to take’ are not modifiers that I would choose, or that even make sense. Neither does this:
The idea that McCain could establish a reputation as a maverick by standing up to his party on numerous issues, win back his party’s support by abandoning nearly all his heterodoxies, then prevail by portraying himself as an unwavering man of principle is nauseating. Yet somehow the idea of a McCain presidency itself doesn’t terrify me. What can I say? Bush has lowered my standards.
Why should Bush lower your standards? Isn’t the lesson of the Bush presidency that we must urgently raise our standards? It’s easy not to be terrified by the prospect of a McCain presidency if you don’t care about reproductive freedom or whether or not we’ll continue neo-conservative policies in the Middle East. What’s astonishing is how far some establishment writers will go to avoid admitting that John McCain is a phony.
Wow, that is just disgusting.
My boyfriend keeps saying, “McCain is unelectable” anytime he sees the ol’ codger speak…. and in any kind of sane world, this would be true. Our democracy may be unrecoverably compromised by poor education and the power of the mainstream media.
I must be missing the gene that allows others to see codgers as charming.
He’s painful to watch, and not just because I don’t like him – I’m painfully embarrassed for him… it’s like watching footage of a fat man falling down stairs or something.
never mind your missing chromo, where are the keys to the wine cellar?
You always do that….hide the keys. You could’ve at the very least left us out a bottle!
Btw, my crabapple clover honey wine is awesome. I’ll be doing up another batch this fall.
Chait may not know what a progressive is, but he apparently thinks that being one is important in the election. Which is a good sign. They want to present Obama as Dubya 3, and McCain as a "progressive." Desperate, is what that is.
He also conveniently doesn’t notice that any “progressive” impulses McCain had after 2000 were driven by that most noble of political principles: pique.
Jake Tapper at ABC has a post out about how McCain’s sense of humor is totally not sociopathic/Bush-like, he just likes to rib the bitches (just like Bob Kerrey and Clinton balance balance they’re all the same except McCain’s a real man vote real man now). And Tapper manages to cite examples of such humor much more innocuous than calling his own wife a c*nt. My comment on the thread lasted almost four minutes before they took it down:
As some individuals have an unwavering fear of unseen terrorists lurking in every unoccupied crack and crevice, it’s good to know that at least for Mr.Chait there is no fear of a clearly diminished relic charting our course for the next 4 years.
Maybe it’s a parody? Some folks on our side seem to have a problem with that sort of thing.