OLD FUSS N’ FEATHERS

The many faces of John McCain

As of March 4, 2008, the Republican Party had a presumptive nominee. And unless those ol' Nazi scientists that Karl Rove has chained in his basement laboratory finally crack the formula and reanimate Ronald Reagan before September 1, that nominee will remain the good Senator from the State of Arizona, John Sidney McCain, III. But despite three decades in the Senate, two Presidential runs, and a well-reported stint in the Hanoi Hilton, the man remains a mystery. So I can't help but try my hand at crackin' the nut.

I've seen the old buzzard flapping around a lot lately, taking advantage of some positive face time with a receptive news media whilst the Democrats wage their shameful civil war. If you believe the hype, McCain is basically your grandfather - a good-natured nostalgic who worked hard all his life and now, in his twilight years, finds comfort in spinning yarns about the good old days. But, as usual, there’s a lot of puff in that media pillow. It’s just as likely that ol' John is a moon-maddened werebeast, a buttoned-up suit that morphs into an unpredictable, rampaging monster about once a month. At the very least, he’s a man of many faces.

Is he a true conservative? If so, why do so many hard-righters see him as a liberal wolf in sheep’s clothing? Is he a party-hoppin’ “maverick,” keen on unifying the American people behind the common good? If so, why does he support the exceedingly divisive Bush administration almost to a vote? A rare exception came when McCain voted against those infamous tax cuts in ‘03, the same tax cuts he now wants to make permanent. Perhaps Republican delegates should dust off those old John Kerry flip-flops and take ‘em along to the convention. Seems to me they’d come in handy.

The Republican National Convention will be held in Minneapolis-St. Paul. The twin cities are a perfect venue for a politician as two-faced as McCain, the freethinking “maverick” with the singularly hard-right voting record who spits the word “liberal” with the same priggish contempt as Neocon blowhards like Sean Hannity. McCain’s campaign finance reform agenda, long heralded as proof of his bi-partisan leanings, is little more than political penance for time served amongst the guilt-ridden ranks of the Keating Five. He’s reformed himself into a reformer, or so he’d have you believe. Things get a little hazier if you believe what you read in the papers.

The New York Times published a report about McCain getting a little too close to telecom lobbyist Vicki Iseman back in ‘99. In a cosmically bad example of misreading, the media trumped the concern of one former campaign staffer (that Iseman and McCain had become romantically involved) as the meat of the story. Tongues immediately started wagging about John McCain the cocksmith, which is actually a backhanded boon for his campaign. Unlike other prominent members of his party, it didn’t take the sponsorship of Pfizer to maintain a claim on his virility. There’s still some fuss in those white feathers. The message being – he may look old, but if this geezer’s junk still works, maybe he’s youthful enough to live, love, and lead for at least a term (or two).

But if you revisit the Times’ article, you’ll find the sex angle to be the fat, not the meat. Whether or not McCain diddled Iseman is immaterial. The presence of a lobbyist at McCain fundraisers and on his private jet signified a close relationship…giving new semantic meaning to his message of “taking on the special interests.” That’s just the kind of flap that could cost a “maverick” his campaign. But since the sex angle was inflated and pin-popped as quickly as a circus balloon, McCain survived the much more deleterious scandal brewing inside that newsprint.

To be fair, the Times blew it big. I’m not sure a rag with their reputation would put out a “swift boat” story unless they were pretty damn sure of its veracity. They risked a “Rathergate” at best and a complete corporate shakedown at worst. But they shouldn’t have included that tasty-yet-unproven tidbit about a romantic relationship; the smallest inference to which was enough to make a profoundly troubling money scandal into an easily diffused sex scandal. Perhaps they were hoping that Iseman could play the part of Lewinsky in a big-budget sequel to that previous blockbuster media event. Or maybe they thought the public would skim over the sentence or two about ho-hum sex and yearn for more information about the juicy lobbying story. Whatever the editorial idea was, it was dunderheaded. The Times gave McCain a newfound erection, right-wing pundits further ammunition against the “liberal media,” and the GOP another plank in a platform from which they may very well win an election that was heretofore unwinnable.

The revitalized Sen. McCain was recently at the White House, courting George W. Bush, a lame duck with the political capital of a cottonmouth snake (the very snake who bit McCain in South Carolina eight years ago). But it shouldn’t be much of a surprise to find these two in an old-fashioned grip n’ grin. In that hotly contested primary of 2000, McCain’s Presidential Campaign Manager, Richard H. Davis, admitted that there was precious little difference between his candidate and W.

The difference, as I see it, is old John’s adeptness at managing his image in the media - his unwavering ability to say one thing on TV and in print yet do another in the Senate and on the campaign trail. This talent makes him all the more troublesome. With Bush, you always knew what you were getting - a dry drunk with the pedal to the metal, swerving hard right off a ragged, war-torn cliff. Terrifying, yet predictable. But with John McCain, the Lon Cheney of American politics, anything is possible.