The American Scene

An ongoing review of politics and culture

• Politics
• Economics
• The Media
• Culture

• Home
• About
• Archive
• Search

Leave a Reply

1. That’s actually not the post I was thinking of — the “Looks Like Sully is Serious” one was on my mind (at present I’m having HTML issues and can’t make a link). And, Maguire’s site attracts some nasty commenters and TM himself can peddle Kool-Aid: but I think in this one, Sullivan deserves the disrespect. What he’s doing is just plain nasty, and buying the comparison to, say, Clinton’s whole-cloth fabrication of the Bosnia incident, or Kerry’s laughable Christmas in Cambodia story (and let’s be clear here: I’ve campaigned, multiple times, for John Kerry) — is hard to justify.

   — Sanjay · Aug 19, 04:13 PM · #

2. One of my absolute favorite songs ever. I happen to agree with the post, as well. It really saddens me to watch Sullivan, a blogger I really like and respect, sully (no pun intended) his reputation with foolish attacks on McCain’s personal credibility.

   What’s worse, this sort of thing has become a bit of a habit among pro-Obama bloggers. Reading racial code-words into every McCain ad, creating a mini-scandal out of the Saddleback Forum’s “cone of silence,” and attacking a deeply-felt spiritual anecdote reflect poorly on Obama and his supporters, who come off as small-minded and churlish.

   — Will · Aug 19, 06:24 PM · #

3. I’ve always been a bit confused when people call Obama an empty shirt and complain that he’s more about personality than policy. This is an entirely personality driven election; I mean even McCain’s supporters make fun of his domestic policy platform, such as it exists.

   I think you need to point out the fact that it’s McCain and his campaign that is constantly putting the war hero stories out there and working as hard as they can to insert his experiences into the campaign. Which, you know, is precisely the sort of thing we were constantly told John McCain wouldn’t do. Look, I can understand being in the tank for somebody and I expect people to defend their candidate. But I can’t for the life of me understand people who continue to maintain that McCain is motivated by this profound integrity. He and his campaign have misrepresented Barack Obama’s record over and over again. Yglesias has talked about these in some detail, and while I’m willing to accept that some of Matt’s charges are unfair, there are several things McCain has said of Obama that just aren’t true. Again, that wouldn’t bother me but for the fact that so much McCain support comes from this perception of him as “stern”, “principled”, “tough”, “fair”, and other Republican cult-of-personality buzzwords. And that wouldn’t bug me if that wasn’t precisely what is so often criticized in regards to Obama.

   As for this charge, I don’t know if it happened or not, nor do I much care. I don’t like being lied to, if it is a lie. But that lie is much less of a negative than the fact that the McCain campaign seems intent on cheapening his service and his ordeal in order to score political points. I read Andrew Sullivan, with interest, on Obama, but I do understand him to be in the tank for Obama. That’s an impulse I understand and don’t begrudge. Similarly, I understand your seemingly uncritical, credulous take on McCain. But I think it’s difficult to say where one person’s overly rosy picture of a candidate ends and another’s begins; I read your posts about McCain exactly as I read Sullivan’s posts about Obama.

   — Freddie · Aug 19, 06:41 PM · #

4. Characteristically, I’ve failed to make my main point clear. The point isn’t “Nyah nyah, you think Andrew Sullivan is in the tank for Obama but you’re in the tank for McCain.” The point is that it’s difficult to say who is in the tank and who is critiquing appropriately but finding little to criticize, because your opinion on that depends on how you view the fundamental policy and personality differences. If that makes sense.

   — Freddie · Aug 19, 07:33 PM · #

5. 1) “Senator McCain: You didn’t start telling this story about a purportedly very important event in your life until you started running for President in 1999, and it sounds just like an evangelical urban legend. Have you confused this story with your own life?” I’m not sure that being asked this question repeatedly would be so awesome for McCain.

   2) By way of analogy, suppose that Obama started talking about a key event in his life that he had not described in his 1995 memoir, and which was discovered to be substantially similar to an anecdote on a 1970s vintage Bill Cosby album. Are you very sure you wouldn’t call B.S. on that? Of course you would. Indeed, it would be toxic for his campaign.

   3) Because it is so inflammatory and ultimately unprovable, the press won’t cover this issue, nor will Leno, Letterman, etc. take it up. But they will know about it, and it may affect their coverage. Accordingly, I don’t see why Sullivan and the various lefty bloggers that have been looking in shouldn’t pursue it, in a respectful fashion.

   — alkali · Aug 19, 07:46 PM · #

6. Freddie, put this stuff on your blog! I can’t be running around to all the blogs you visit to find your thoughts.

   — bcg · Aug 19, 09:33 PM · #

7. I blog a few times a week, if that. I haven’t voted since 2000. I rooted for Republican defeats in 2004 and 2006. I’ve criticized John McCain forcefully on many occasions, and continue to do so. I am ambivalent about this election, and don’t have much confidence in either candidate, though I’m more impressed by McCain’s foreign policy record than most.

   If this counts as being in the tank — and if this is identical or even comparable to Andrew’s genuine enthusiasm for Obama — then I think you have an eccentric reading of being in the tank.

   — Reihan · Aug 19, 10:43 PM · #

8. what a great great song. I don’t get Sullivan – during the primaries, didn’t he like McCain? He seems to have turned against him solely on the basis of the fact that he’s running against Obama. It seems to be a bit of a trend among Obama-philes.

   — hugo · Aug 19, 11:55 PM · #

9. OK: full disclosure first just because I’m about to be called a hack. I care about domestic issues but I care more about the wars but I care much MUCH more about the way the current President has sought to expand his powers in deeply unAmerican ways, giving him grotesque abilities to ignore search and seizure protections and the rights of the accused, all of which seems a piece to me with a torture policy I find shameful and repulsive, and basically I’m willing to put all my other ideology aside at this point and vote for whoever seems more inclined to, y’know, bring back checks-and-balances. That for me would’ve flat ruled out all the Republicans, but then they went and nominated McCain, and the Democrats nominated Obama (whom I find credible on this score in a way Clinton would not have been). McCain just barely edges Obama for me on that criterion, but Obama’s good, and so I’m beginning to find myself getting off-put by, say, McCain’s Georgia pronouncements. Anyway: I like both guys. Go figger.

   Freddie, you’re given occasionally to projecting on Reihan about what he thinks. This here’s an example. I can’t find much support in his blog for “in the tank for McCain,” and in general Salam is the most self-questioning, cautious blogger I know of by a damn sight, which is why I read him. I feel like he’s almost painfully anxious about having an “ideology.” Maybe I misread. Going on…

   Sullivan and others keep trying to tell me how pivotal this one experience was for McCain — analogously I suppose to Kerry’s abysmally dumb “seared, seared” for his Cambodia trip-that-wasn’t. That’s wrong. McCain was a tortured POW for ridiculously long. I suspect there are many, many days of that experience the produced huge, life-changing events for McCain and as Maguire documented there are any number of little religious epiphanies he’s talked about over the years: some of those stories have faded away, and as I suggested in the post below, you get the feeling he goes with whichever ones he finds by trial-and-error over time and through memory have particular resonance for him and for his audience. That’s what alkali’s missing: it’s ridiculous to claim hat this or that faith/torture experience is somehow the essential one missing in McCain’s narrative, and poking at it only brings out the crushing weight of them all. His story — unlike say Kerry’s — loses nothing if all the details of that one anecdote are misremembered — Sullivan’s making a big deal over whether the cross was drawn with a sandal or a stick? Really? Are you fucking kidding me? I read that and I think, I read this boob, why, again? McCain was being tortured — I strongly suspect he has screwed up a lot of the details in his memory and they’re ten kinds of twisted, but that the overall important narratives are true: what I’ll wager is, McCain had some event involving sympathy from a guard and a scrawled cross, and everything else — including McCain’s own memories — is probably wrong.

   Now: a whole lot of people on the Internets seem to think that of a lot of America, the big deal is, McCain was a POW — and hey, we got other war heroes out there on our side, man! Holding this odd belief has nothing to do with intelligence — I remember staring unbelievingly across a table at a brilliant Berkeley prof in 1999 (I campaigned for Bradley) when he said, “McCain was a POW — he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, what’s the big deal?”

   So let me clarify something about McCain’s war record and why they’re stressing it. NB this has been done better by smart people: David Foster Wallace, in particular, in a 2000 essay which is in his Consider the Lobster anthology: go buy it, the fist essay on porn is alone worth it…. anyway. The big deal is not that he was a POW. It’s that he was in some sense a voluntary POW: McCain turned down release, again and again, out of a powerful sense of what he felt the nation’s honor should be, and he did it though he thought the choice meant an agonizing death for him.

   [Interestingly I was speaking with a few military officers about a year ago, who were not McCain fans politically, and who were bridling over why people felt that McCain’s peculiar status made him somehow better or more courageous than any other POW. I threw in, well, sure — I don’t know how you measure that stuff: but the choice he made does impact on how much respect you give him as a politician, in a way that it never would for another POW — and they all hastened to agree. So, most of America gets this — it’s not that McCain was a POW, it’s how.]

   So what’s interesting about that how? Well, McCain cares deeply about America’s character and what’s good for the country, and he cares about it — well, hell, more than I do. Maybe more than anyone. And he’s proved it, in a way maybe no other American political figure ever has. McCain’s ethic apparently really is, that he wants what’s best for the country, regardless of what the personal consequences are. I believe that — and most Americans will, too. [I should say: I also feel this way about McCain a little because of how I’ve heard him quietly accept full blame for scandalous behavior in the Keating Five affair. I remember that business, and based on the Congressional inquiry McCain could go ahead and say, look, I didn’t do anything serious. John Glenn — whom I respect, and whose role was pretty much identical to McCain’s — has done that.]

   Note that that doesn’t necessarily make him the best candidate. He may have grossly wrong notions about what’s good for the country (for example, his position on Georgia seems dangerous and misguided), in which case his very depth of commitment is a flaw, not an asset. But the thing we’d all like to believe about our politicians is that they truly want to serve the public more than they are driven by their own egos. Of McCain — and McCain alone — there can be no doubt. It’s for that reason that Brooks called him, a year ago, the only great man running — and I agree, even though I might not vote for the guy. Maybe Brooks is wrong. But I doubt it, and I think most of the country doubts it. McCain can certainly pander during an election — as can Obama — but I believe he is convinced, rightly or wrongly, that in so doing he serves the greater good, that this or that lie is justified because it gets him to the White House and there he can serve America (NB I personally think this is a bad strategy for both candidates, and particularly demeaning to McCain. But I think it’s understandable.) I wish I thought McCain’s positions on everything were right, because surely his commitment to America is deep and powerful, and it would be nice to have a President like that. And he’s attacking Obama there because, well, McCain is unquestionably strong there and Obama is weak there: there is an air of narcissism about the guy.

   So when some twit like Yglesias keeps using language painting McCain as evil or fundamentally greedy or nasty or what-have-you — instead of very probably being simply mistaken, which is a good reason to vote against the guy and not particularly nefarious. Maybe you have to do that in today’ electoral climate. But if you do — McCain wins.

   Why? Because — well, what’s the point of what Sullivan’s doing? You really think it says to me somehow something about McCain’s fundamental character, his venality? Because, again: as far as I’m concerned, McCain’s commitment to serving the public is as unquestionable as it comes. What Reihan is trying to say is, that if Sullivan is dumb enough to think that this is ground he wants people to be trodding when they weigh the candidates, then, well, most everybody will decide that even if everything Sullivan says about the cross incident is true, McCain wins on character, because he does.

   OK. Thanks to “Preview” I can see that this is long-winded, badly organized and crappily written. But the hell with it: smart people have tried to make this point and failed to get it across, maybe what it takes is a nut. That’s what I’ve got. You can call me a hack now.

   — Sanjay · Aug 20, 12:50 AM · #

10. Sanjay, I think you’re the best. And for what it’s worth, I really like Freddie too.

    — Reihan · Aug 20, 03:18 AM · #

11. I just read a post from another POW (linked on Sullivan’s site) that says that McCain’s experiences—the thing that makes him a “great man” were shared by 600 others. They all got tourtured, all got the same medals, all got and turned down offers of early release. Does that mean that there are 600 great men out there who are qualified to be president? Would McCain still be qulaified to be president if he hadn’t experienced this? Would he even be senator if he hadn’t been shot down? Does one experience early in your life give you a free pass on having character for the rest of your life?

    His POW experience is definitely one thing to consider, but it was only one small part of his experience. And to sanctify him for this one experience, as Sanjay seems to be doing, so that any questioning of his more recent actions or, for example, a eminently questionable story, is a blasphemous attack on his forever impeachable character, is a romantic mistake. You have to be clear-eyed and cynical when it comes to seecting leaders.

    My take on McCain is that he is an average man. He’s had good moments and bad. And he really really wants to be president and has adjusted behavior in whatever ways make that more likely. That’s what an average man does. George washington was a great man. They offered him a kingdom and he turned it down.

    ps I don’t think Obama is a great man, and I have many policy disagreements with him. But I think he is more honest and rational than McCain.

    — cw · Aug 20, 04:23 AM · #

12. I’m not prone to tell people online when the do good, just when I disagree. Cause where’s the fun in that, you know? You’re probably right, Sanjay, about my projection; and it’s my failing. I think questions of heterodoxy and ideological promiscuity are complicated and difficult, and are clearly not restricted to Reihan. My concern— with anyone— is that not having an ideology becomes an ideology. Heterodoxy is a good thing. Investment in heterodoxy is a terrible thing. It’s a mask that eats the face, to borrow a phrase. Reihan is a smarter political thinker and a far better writer than I am, as I’m sure goes without saying. But my questions about this specific topic remain.

    As to the substance, look. As much as you’ve said, and said well and passionately, you’re kind of proving my point. You’ve demonstrated, it seems to me, that support for McCain is largely based on a cult of personality and not on policy. You’ve really mentioned no policy positions that endear you to McCain, just vague notions of national greatness and integrity, even while you allow that he’s engaging in some campaign dirty tricks. And he is, and not unknowingly, not unwillingly, and not minimally: whatever else is true of John McCain, he and his campaign staff have played hardball in this election, and in my opinion repeatedly mischaracterized Barack Obama and his record. Repeatedly. There are ample examples that support that. I don’t believe that many of his campaign’s statements can legitimately be called anything other than intentional and pernicious manipulation of the truth. You don’t like Yglesias, that’s fine. Consider McCain’s conservative critics, or his seemingly moderate critics. There’s plenty of people smarter than me who have seen through the smoke and mirrors of the great advertising campaign that has followed John McCain since 2000. Matt Welch— far, far from a liberal— is a great place to start.

    This focus on personality would be bad enough, but it is precisely the same criticism that is leveled against Barack Obama again and again, that he is an empty suit, just a charmer. What does it say about your candidate and your interrogation of him that you write a long, supportive missive about him but have so little to say about his policies? Andrew Sullivan is criticizing McCain’s character; McCain’s supporters, in my opinion, are criticizing Obama for being all about character while at once constantly focusing on McCain’s.

    I don’t want to mince words: your vision of what constitutes a good presidential candidate seems deeply flawed, to me. But okay, let’s talk about it. What do you have in support of your vision of a Great Man and McCain’s commitment to his country? What possible evidence do you have that Obama is NOT invested in his country’s greatness? You have none, really, beyond your own intuition. You have only assertion and feelings about narcissism. (John McCain has written nine books about himself. Nine.) And while I know that trusting your intuition is very important, it isn’t a way to create a meaningful public discussion and it isn’t a way to pragmatically confront the problem of electing presidents. The preoccupation with notions of greatness and the cult of personality in the selection of democratically elected leadership has been, to my mind, an unqualified disaster. (Many fascist leaders have been utterly assured of their country’s greatness, and their own correctness. Many of the most terrible criminals of the last century have been principled men, men who lived by codes and dogmas. Every tyrant is certain of himself, his country and its place in history. And many of them, yes, were great men, by any conventional definition, and their crimes are an incredible stain on human history.) But look, setting aside the wisdom of leadership selection through appeals to (self-)importance is the fact that there is no referent through which we can access these men’s relative greatness. Greatness can’t be quantified, and while you really, really think that McCain is a greater man, and of higher integrity, than Barack Obama, that’s not good enough. “He simply is” is not good enough when electing the most powerful man in the world. I have my own visions of integrity.

    This is why, in my opinion, Reihan is in danger of losing his discrimination, Sanjay, and why maybe you are as well. It’s really hard for me to read what you’ve written and believe that you are employing much of a meaningful critical apparatus in evaluating McCain. You, and I believe Reihan, have so deeply internalized the notion of McCain’s sternness, his integrity and his greatness, that you don’t see the degree to which you’ve lost perspective on a career politician. You can’t disprove this with appeals to voting record or writing. The problem isn’t whether or not Reihan or anyone else is actively endorsing and campaigning for McCain, as Andrew Sullivan is for Obama. The problem is whether or not you can look beyond this powerful narrative of John McCain’s sainthood that you seem so devoted to. Nothing looks like irrational investment to the person who’s so invested. I don’t know that Reihan has crossed some threshold, and I admit that it is unfair to say that he’s in the tank. But I think posing the question is important, for anyone.

    Surely, if there is a reformist conservatism, it is one that doesn’t sacrifice notions of basic fairness and critical equity on the altar of partisan politics. No one has any standing, in my mind, to attack Barack Obama’s patriotism, or his commitment to his country, or his national pride. This is exactly why people think that McCain’s camp is trafficking far too casually in issues of moral seriousness and patriotism. There’s no question, really, that denigration through fiat in regards to Obama’s commitment to his country’s excellence, his love of country, and his moral seriousness is an appeal to fear of the other. And there’s no question that the narrative so exactingly devised by the McCain campaign is designed to play to the prejudices of many about what constitutes fidelity to country. You’re entitled to your own reading of those things, of course. I wouldn’t support someone questioning John McCain’s patriotism or his commitment to country, though that is a very different question than whether or not a story he told is true or not. But I don’t think that your certitude that there is only one reading of the relative values of John McCain and Barack Obama is justified. And despite many people thinking that liberals are constantly crying wolf about racism or similar, I think this kind of thinking does occupy a rhetorical space that includes some of the most noxious kinds of exclusionism and constrictive definitions of what it means to be American. There are quite a few people, after all, who do believe in Barack Obama’s integrity, and his greatness— though I’m not really one of them. I’m not an Obamaphile, though I will vote for him. I’m deeply concerned about the possibility that his presidency will disappoint liberals like myself, and I fear for what that will mean for the left and its coalition. And I gave up a long time ago on trusting politicians or getting emotionally invested in them.

    But I believe in fair process, and in a practical electoral discussion that centers in policy. Obviously, that isn’t the case for Andrew Sullivan. I’m not him. But I can’t see how it benefits the ideals of integrity and greatness to remove them from questions of honesty, and as it is McCain’s campaign who has relentlessly flogged his war record, it’s they who are responsible for making it an issue of partisan politics. I mean, anything else aside, there’s the fundamental question: is it true or not? Is the story true? You say that Andrew shouldn’t go into this territory because it’s self evident to you that McCain is the better man. But better man or worse, the question remains whether this story really happened or not. I’m not happy with the way Sullivan has framed all of this, and I have no intuition whatsoever as to whether his charges are accurate. But what does it say about your vision of integrity and the man who feel embodies that ideal, if your devotion to him insist that it’s better not to ask that question?

    — Freddie · Aug 20, 05:17 AM · #

13. Tactically, by the way, I agree that this would be a stupid, stupid line for the Obama camp to take— which is why I’m glad Andrew Sullivan and other Obama campaign proxies in the media are the ones bringing this up, and not Obama’s actual campaign. I don’t see what Sullivan thinks he’ll accomplish by pushing this. Not because McCain just is this super-principled guy, but because that narrative just isn’t going to fly; the media is too absorbed in the McCain origin story.

    — Freddie · Aug 20, 05:31 AM · #

14. Reihan,

    You’re a very smart guy, man. What were you doing rooting for a Republican loss in both 2000 and 2004?

    I mean, they’re not perfect (who is), but, for heaven’s sake, compared to the Democrats?

    Interesting article you might find here, in The Prospect (NOT in the UK’s conservative mag, the Spectator, tellingly): George Bush as the new Truman.

    http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10309

    Now that I’ve done that, look for Sullivan to NOT notice this on his blog. Only criticisms of President Bush, the Vice-President and, now, apparently, Sen. McCain on the flimsiest of Sullivan’s made-up charges (and that’s saying something) are worth his time.

    Notice, too, that since Sullivan still calls himself a “conservative,” that he’d notice fellow British conservative (and, also, advisor to Margaret Thatcher, as Sullivan was a onetime aide) and fellow-skeptic of, for lack of a better term, “compassionate conservatism,” and his COVER article.

    No.

    My prediction is that Sullivan will pointedly NOT notice it, and will not reference it. He’ll probably reference another letter writer to his blog, though, speculating on some other tangential piece of misinformation or non-information about Sen. McCain, etc.

    Good luck, Reihan. Being friends with Sullivan means never, ever to cross him (in his mind only) down the line.

    — MA · Aug 20, 09:00 AM · #

15. Reihan,

    You’re a very smart guy, man. What were you doing rooting for a Republican loss in both 2000 and 2004?

    I mean, they’re not perfect (who is), but, for heaven’s sake, compared to the Democrats?

    Interesting article you might find here, in The Prospect (NOT in the UK’s conservative mag, the Spectator, tellingly): George Bush as the new Truman.

    http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10309

    Now that I’ve done that, look for Sullivan to NOT notice this on his blog. Only criticisms of President Bush, the Vice-President and, now, apparently, Sen. McCain on the flimsiest of Sullivan’s made-up charges (and that’s saying something) are worth his time.

    Notice, too, that since Sullivan still calls himself a “conservative,” that he’d notice fellow British conservative (and, also, advisor to Margaret Thatcher, as Sullivan was a onetime aide) and fellow-skeptic of, for lack of a better term, “compassionate conservatism,” and his COVER article.

    No.

    My prediction is that Sullivan will pointedly NOT notice it, and will not reference it. He’ll probably reference another letter writer to his blog, though, speculating on some other tangential piece of misinformation or non-information about Sen. McCain, etc.

    Good luck, Reihan. Being friends with Sullivan means never, ever to cross him (in his mind only) down the line.

    Your co-author (and, I’m assuming, good friend and co-Atlantic colleague of Sullivan’s) Ross D will find this out, if he hasn’t already.

    Save this post.

    — MA · Aug 20, 09:02 AM · #

16. Freddie, you misread deliberately. I think McCain is a “great man.” I don’t think that necessarily makes him the best presidential candidate (and right now it looks like I’m voting for the lesser man but probably better president, Obama). I think Wayne Shorter and William Vollman are great men and I don’t want either of them anywhere the hell near the White House except at like an awards ceremony, thanks very much. So I’m not voting on character. I’m just saying that if I were, and if most people were — and Sullivan seems to think that should be the issue, it’s not me making this a “cult of personality” — McCain would win, hands down. And, furthermore, there’s something truly remarkable — almost unique — about McCain’s having passed this test. In fact I opened with a disclaimer about what my voting preferences are, and they aren’t about personality: they’re about a concrete policy goal, which is to restore the answerability of the presidency. I think that that bascially answers your criticisms.

    cw, where you’re wrong — and indeed where my officer friends stood in awe of McCain — is the, “all of them were offered early release” bit. McCain stayed where he was, precisely because they weren’t, and it was US policy to strive for egalitarianism in accepting released prisoners (taken back in the order captured). But I quite agree with you that many, many military are pissed with the idea that McCain is some big hero in a way those other POWs aren’t, and I wouldn’t make that claim, ever. I’m just saying he’s proven a commitment to public service in a way they didn’t. And, again, real live military seem to agree.

    Reread the porn essay last night. Really y’all ought to get that David Foster Wallace book. I know, guys who tell you “you gotta read this” are dicks.

    Freddie, heterodoxy isn’t necessarily great either. Look at Reihan’s weridly impotent response to Conn Carroll below: it’s like he never grasps the question that pretty much every reader is going to ask, which is, OK, so, you’re presenting all these interesting policy ideas, but you really, seriously have no favorites among them? But that’s very Reihan. It’s charming.

    — Sanjay · Aug 20, 12:55 PM · #

17. I should append that that general policy preference — that I think that the presidency has gone so far in declaring itself not answerable to Congress or the courts, and that reining that in should be America’s biggest priority — leads to weird preferences. In general all the Republican candidates had terrible track records, but Clinton might’ve been worse than any of them. So I do feel a bit out of sync with political commentary.

    — Sanjay · Aug 20, 01:37 PM · #

18. Freddie said: “You’ve demonstrated, it seems to me, that support for McCain is largely based on a cult of personality and not on policy. You’ve really mentioned no policy positions that endear you to McCain, just vague notions of national greatness and integrity […]”
    ——————————

    A cult of personality is based on charisma. McCain’s support is based on his character. People who claim that Obama has a cult of personality believe that his support comes from his charisma. I don’t think many would claim that McCain is particularly charismatic. That’s the difference.

    This issue is a loser for democrats.

    — locke · Aug 20, 03:56 PM · #

19. Sanjay,

    Good day, sir. I’d have to disagree with you vis-a-vis the Presidency. The Presidency is always answerable to Congress, provided they show some leadership to assert their prerogatives (they were doing so, early in the first year of President Bush’s second term; witness the Detainee Treatment Act, etc).

    As for the Courts, they’re the most “imperial” of all. The President should, rightly (as Andrew Jackson did) not enforce the laws that are, clearly, unconstitutional (see Abraham Lincoln and Dred Scott, for example).

    I can expand upon this, but I just wanted to make that point.

    Barack Obama, however, will put in place activist judges who will have NO boundaries – not the Constitution, not legislatively-enacted statutes, nothing.

    I think you should reconsider his real record vs. that of McCain’s, blemished though it is, itself.

    Have a good day.

    — MA · Aug 21, 06:37 AM · #

Commenting is closed for this article.

↑ My Son the Krikkiter

↓ Civic Participation

All contents copyright The American Scene unless otherwise noted. Colophon. Archive.