Tuesday, April 15, 2008
John McCain
I do not normally comment on domestic politics here, especially if it has to do with a presidential candidate in an election year. I will reluctantly violate my own policy, however, to point out this commentary on John McCain. It is well worth reading carefully, especially for those who reject the intellectual underpinnings of conventional liberalism but want to remain within mainstream politics as voters, and who are therefore inclined to support McCain as the least of all evils. I admit that the Milton Friedman quote at the end is a bit uncompromising for most tastes, but do cut the author some slack and consider it in the context of the piece as a whole.
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7 comments:
I don't think this article breaks any new ground; these are long-standing complaints about McCain (from those sympathetic to Cato, at least). And I think the Friedman quote, if anything, compromises too much - I'd prefer his fourth sentence, e.g., to have ended after the fifth word.
But the article gives us no reason to believe that McCain is not the least of the three current evils; it mentions nothing at all about either of his current rivals.
My impression is that they would both be quite a bit worse than McCain in the areas the commentary criticizes him for. As one example, Healy complains that McCain is a fan of Americorps, but of course that program was started by the spouse of one of his possible opponents. The spouse of the other recently said:
"Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
...which looks a lot like what Healy decries about McCain.
None of which is intended as a defense of JM, however. I think it's likely he'd do the least damage of anyone with a chance to win, but probably not by a particularly large margin.
Fair enough. I certainly did not mean to imply that McCain was unique in the respects which the article criticizes them for, or that the article claimed that he was. I think the surprise is that if one subscribes to the conventional wisdom regarding the doctrinal foundations of the two main political parties, one would expect this type of rhetoric to come from the party of JM's opponents more readily than from JM's own.
And I tend to agree that even with all that, JM is probably still the least of all evils; I just tend to despair more when I see evidence of a pervasive philosophy that is distasteful to me than when I see merely a specific policy proposal that is distasteful on a pragmatic level but does not violate major intellectual principles too egregiously.
Honestly, I don't think McCain cares whether people are engaged in a cause greater than themselves, or not. This is a man who has spent his entire life pursuing self-interested goals. He won't even bring back a dollar for Arizona to fund its interstates.
I'm very interested in what you think of Ayn Rand, Tony. Care for a post?
I suppose given the everyday realities of our politics, it's reasonable to expect a senator to bring money to his home state. In the abstract, however, I do not believe it's the government's business to build or fix roads. This is neither a defense of McCain nor an attack on him, I'm merely expressing an opinion.
It's been years since I've read Ayn Rand. Perhaps it's time for a refresher. From those years, I remember loving The Fountainhead, but not liking Atlas Shrugged nearly as much, for reasons too long to get into in a comment. I do respect her as a writer because she didn't learn English until age 20, and her first language happens to be the same as mine.
Funny that you mention Rand -- I believe Healy actually says that he is not a Randian in his piece on McCain.
Healy's comment about Rand was what reminded me of her. I liked "We the Living", her first book. I always thought it should be made into a movie, if for no other reason than to show a bride walking alone in a blizzard.
Maybe McCain is the president for you -- he doesn't believe in government spending, either. Except for war. No problem there.
...he doesn't believe in government spending, either.
Of course he does. Give him a couple months to finish playing to the base; it'll be more obvious after the convention.
I'm 100% with RWH on this, to my great chagrin. Every national-level politician believes in government spending in some form. There is no longer such a thing as "small government conservative."
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