Here’s Some Change For You
Posted on September 1st, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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As Rush Limbaugh understands, but the Democrats apparently do not, a McCain administration would not be like a Bush administration. ~David Brooks
This is true enough–it would be much, much worse. While Mr. Bush and his backers have often tended to portray their political opponents as freedom-hating goons and bigots (remember how doubting the “freedom agenda” was no better than racism?), McCain always portrays his political opponents as dishonorable cads who put their petty goals ahead of high and noble ideals, which McCain is invariably defending. If McCain supports a given policy, opposition to it is ipso facto selfish and small-minded, because opposing the policy means opposing the great reforming crusader who only acts to serve the public, which must mean that his opponents persist in their opposition because they are self-serving, corrupt or possessed of some malevolence. Bush is relatively much more reasonable and accommodating. He merely thinks that God has appointed him liberator of the world; McCain’s hubris is much more powerful. If you want an idea of what a McCain administration would be like, imagine the last eight years and then remove whatever common sense and competence there has been and you will be close.
Filed under: politics
Good point although there wasn’t a whole lot of common sense and competence in the Bush Administration, especially in the first five years (the years of the greatest ideological fervor which also coincided with the worst abuses/missteps of Iraq, torture, Katrina plus bankrupting the US). The only reason they have behaved (in relative terms) a little better in the last couple of years is that they have imploded internally due to their own arrogance, mismanagement and stupidity.
McCain probably won’t repeat some of their mistakes – he’ll come up with new ones.
If you want an idea of what a McCain administration would be like, imagine the last eight years and then remove whatever common sense and competence there has been and you will be close.
Ouch.
Oh boy, I am really enjoying these post-vacation Larison guns that are just massacring McCain.
[...] conscience on civil liberties and the treatment of prisoners. Posted by Jim Henley @ 12:24 am, Filed under: Main « « Coming soon to a SWAT team near you | Main| [...]
[...] [ADDENDUM: Cf. Henley: It remains to be seen whether Palin is merely as big a fraud as most politicians or a bigger one, but Palin herself is a distraction. And, you know, she’s not running for President. John McCain is, and as Larison says, John McCain would be everything anyone hated about the Bush years minus the occasional bouts of temperance. Eve and Nat Hentoff (whom she links) wonder if Palin would be "as flip-flopping as Mr. McCain on the Bush torture policy," which is an odd way to put it. There’s no evidence that Palin has a preexisting torture policy to flip away from, let alone what it would be. What there is evidence of is: Sarah Palin is John McCain’s running mate, not the other way around. Sarah Palin and John McCain are running under the aegis of the Republican Party, which has made support for torture a litmus-test issue. Think about it: John McCain would not be the GOP presidential nominee if he had not flip-flopped on torture, because the GOP is a pro-torture institution. Its elites and its mass base insist on the rightness and necessity of torture. It doesn’t even matter what Sarah Palin’s personal opinion is: she’s not being hired to be the Party’s conscience on civil liberties and the treatment of prisoners. [...]