Little Man Bleeding

by Molly Ivors

(At right, John McCain courts his next wife.)

First, a big WhiskeyFire congratulations to our favorite Nobel Prize winner, economist Paul Krugman! Personally, I think it was his panel on DFH Economics that put him over the top. As a bonus, clearly it's driving MoDo around the bend, so there's that.

But my concern this morning is with the Republican candidate for the presidency, who I genuinely think is losing his mind. Sad, really. You know, the way that seeing someone who blew by you on the highway pulled over ten minutes later is sad. But what's even sadder is watching the wingnuts scuffle--while not actually admitting that they've already lost this thing--to apportion blame. Perennial faves include the darkies (They never should have gotten mortgages! They wanted to live in houses?!?!?!?) and the hippies, of course (They tried to register people to vote and then reported irregularities! As they are legally required to do!  OMG!!1!eleven!!) but there's also the icky girl factor: Bobo called Palin "a cancer on the party" the other day. In public and everything. (Note  Bobo: bringing up cancer might not help your guy. Just sayin'...)

I've been ruminating about all this for a couple of days, but I was pushed to write by the spectacular mental acrobatics of Michael Gerson, who, in what appears to be a defense of John McCain, argues, Gloria Swanson-like, that McCain is still a great man, it's just the pictures that got small. Or something.

Following the onset of the crisis, McCain was left with flawed options. He reasonably chose to work for a responsible bailout while hoping the markets would stabilize quickly. Instead, the bailout proved politically unpopular and the markets gyrated like the Pussycat Dolls. Then McCain raised Obama's past association with William Ayers -- a valid attack if properly raised. (Can anyone doubt that the past political association of McCain with a right-wing terrorist would attract some attention?) But this accusation naturally looks small compared to the nation's outsized economic fears.

Obama's task has been easier. He needs only to ride a historical current instead of fighting it. And this plays to his greatest political strength: the easy, laid-back self-assurance of a 1940s crooner. During the financial crisis Obama has contributed nothing of note or consequence. His only recent accomplishment has been to say questionable things in the debates -- attacking Republicans and capitalism for a credit meltdown that congressional Democrats helped to cause, blaming America for Iran's nuclear ambitions, talking piously about genocide prevention when his own early Iraq policies might have resulted in genocide -- all while sounding supremely reassuring and presidential.

Obama's current success is not enjoyable for conservatives. But this does not make McCain an incompetent. Maybe he is a great man running at the most difficult of times.

Are you all with us now, people? Obama says nothing, does nothing, but he does it well. John McCain struggles to be heroic, but he has been, in Gerson's title "Ambushed By History" and forced to "look small." Naughty history! Spankings for you!

A note to Gerson: McCain acted--foolishly and flailingly--because he thought he should look like he was acting. It did not work. (Also because he was justly terrified of debating the crooner, but you knew that.) McCain looks small because he is--and I hope you're sitting down--a very small man. And I'm not talking about osteoporosis. I'm talking about the pettiest, meanest, most self-centered person you could possibly have running the country. Take the USS Forrestal, for example, McCain's ship in Vietnam. An accidental launch of a rocket starts a fire, other explosives go off, 134 die, 161 are injured. McCain, instead of fighting the fire, runs away and hides, interested only in saving his own skin.

As the ship burned, McCain took a moment to mourn his misfortune; his combat career appeared to be going up in smoke. "This distressed me considerably," he recalls in Faith of My Fathers. "I feared my ambitions were among the casualties in the calamity that had claimed the Forrestal."

This is in his fucking campaign memoir. Small man indeed.

Throughout his career, he has repeatedly violated all kinds of moral and ethical and legal codes for his own advancement. He is a selfish, pampered playboy with an outsized sense of his own gifts. And frankly, we've already been down that path. But no, for Gerson, this is all about the situation changing around McCain, not McCain contorting himself to fit what he mistakenly perceives to be the situation. The Ayers stuff is playing badly for McCain because it's a bullshit tactic and everyone knows it. Palin is pulling his numbers down because she's just like him, only more provincial. These are decisions McCain made, and bad ones. (Do you get the sense that somewhere Mike Huckabee is giggling over his fried squirrel au gratin over this?)

Make no mistake, Michael Gerson: John McCain is a very, very small man. If he were any smaller, Lemuel Gulliver would piss on him.

But Gerson won't listen. Because the point of all this is to emphasize that Your Republican Daddies do not make mistakes. James Joyce once said: "A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery." Well, sure. But we're not dealing with a genius here. We're dealing with a Tim Healy-like opportunist, and Joyce had nothing good to say about them.

Comments

[V for Virginia]

Obama's task has been easier. He needs only to ride a historical current instead of fighting it.

Because, um, minorities have had all the advantages until now? Or, er, because the Democrats have had such sweeping successes in the past 8 years?

I mean, uh, I guess McCain is kind of a victim of circumstances because, well, he's not had any political influence to speak of until now? So everything that's happened that would lead to a tidal wave of backlash against the status quo is just beyond his sphere of influence? Or, erm . . .

I can't keep up, but this is wonderful, as usual, Molly.

[Molly Ivors]

V, to keep up with the contortions of these people you'd need eight diet cokes, some chocolate-covered espresso beans, and a pound of cocaine.

[MikeJ]

Far be it from me to defend McCain, but it was his plane that got hit by the missile. He had just jumped out of a burning plane over a patch of flaming flight deck and you want him to stay and fight the fire?

There are any number of moronic and cowardly things that McCain has done. I don't think you can count anything on the Forrestal among them.

[Molly Ivors]

MikeJ,
my point was that he admits his first thought was for his career.

[Orwell Wasnt Dreaming]

Mike J, you are incorrect. McCain *likes* to say it was his plane that was hit, but it was the one next to him. He needs an explanation for why, when he jumped out of his burning plane, he managed to drop one of his bombs, which contributed greatly to the problem.
And yes, I *do* want him to stay and fight the fire. The other pilots in the same situation tried to save others and the ship.
His carefully crafted persona as war hero sickens me, especially as he literally and admittedly committed treason by collaborating with the enemy.

[Pope Ratzo]

I heard Molly was handing out cocaine and chocolates here so I ran over..

Oh. Well, terrific post Thers.

[tomdurk]

The Rolling Stone article pointed out that while nearly everyone else on the Forrestal was fighting the fire, McBush went down to the pilot's lounge and watched the fire on closed-circuit TV. All of his reactions were self centered, following a pattern set when he was a baby & continuing today.
The RS article should be required reading before you vote.

[ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©]

You know, the way that seeing someone who blew by you on the highway pulled over ten minutes later is sad.

The schaden freuds itself!
~

[Righteous Bubba]

Maybe he is a great man running at the most difficult of times.

God damn that Most-Difficult-of-Times-Making party!

[ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©]

At its heart lies what I shall call the Great Marxisant Fallacy: the belief that the society we inhabit is the bad bourgeois society, but that, fortunately, this society is in a state of crisis, so that the good society which lies just around the corner can be easily attained if only we work systematically to destroy the language, the values, the culture, the ideology of bourgeois society. (I say `Marxisant' because I am speaking of a broad metaphysical view about history and about how society works, derived from Marxism, but forming the basis for the structuralism, post-structuralism, and theories of ideology and language developed in the sixties.)

In other words, he just made it up, RB.
~

[Sparkle Plenty]

LOL funny, Molly, and exactly on the mark.

I do find it sad that another deluded politician has to face the humiliation of coming unglued on the national stage.

For me, it's just like Nixon. I loathe McCain in much the same way, but can't help feeling that a smidgen of self-awareness could have spared them, their families and all of us so much.

For the sake of "all of us", at least McCain's crash has come before he made it to White House.
.

[charles pierce]

Tim Healy?
TIM FUCKING HEALY?
Now THAT, kids, is a reference.
Very well-played, ma'am.

[Molly Ivors]

Very well-played, ma'am.

(curtsies, blushing)

[Ripley]

I cling to my original theory, that McCain should have:

1 - Changed his campaign slogan to "It's my turn, damn it!"

2 - Sued the Obama campaign for running against McCain (when it was McCain's turn, damn it!). What judge wouldn't order Obama to drop out of the race?

[pbg]

Gerson's argument has a validity to it if you rephrase it thus:
The rapacious, fascistic and head-bangingly incompetent performance made any Republican candidacy a hopeless crusade.
So hopeless that even a young black man with the middle name of Hussein could sail past an old white war hero that the press loved.
John McCain's ambition was such that he ran anyway, the poor sap.

There. A little more accurate.
I think that the Republican leadership saw this election as a guaranteed loss. They knew this was biologically McCain's last chance, so they cleared the decks for him. (so to speak: but remember the tumult for McCain among the punditry when McCain came in 4th in Iowa? Remember Mitt's abrupt dropping out?)
If you're going to lose, lose with an old war hero.
But I think they're delighted with Sarah Palin: a nobody from nowhere that they can blame the landslide on. It's already being broached.
This is not to say that they're not going to fight like hell, and fight dirty--but the excuses are being set up.

[John Emerson]

McCain's terrorist is G. Gordon Liddy.

Far be it from me to defend McCain, but it was his plane that got hit by the missile. He had just jumped out of a burning plane over a patch of flaming flight deck and you want him to stay and fight the fire?

There are any number of moronic and cowardly things that McCain has done. I don't think you can count anything on the Forrestal among them.

Read the article. Other guys on the flight line--whose planes were also torched--stayed to help out.

He also got off the ship with the Times' Johnny Apple at the earlierst opportunity and headed to Saigon for some R and R.

[Luther Brixton]

"You know, the way that seeing someone who blew by you on the highway pulled over ten minutes later is sad."

Actually, I can't relate to that metaphor. That usually makes my day, and is definitely not sad.

[Dieter]

Spot on Molly! I second that recommendation from Pope Ratzo to read the Rolling Stone article.

[Stefan]

Far be it from me to defend McCain, but it was his plane that got hit by the missile. He had just jumped out of a burning plane over a patch of flaming flight deck and you want him to stay and fight the fire?

No, fuck it, let it burn. Let the whole ship burn.

God damn yes I want him to stay and fight the fire, because that's what the rest of the sailors on that ship did!

[Where's McCane?]

Is this like the dinosaurs complaining, "We didn't change, the planet changed around us!"?

Conservatism - We Don't Change!

[John Emerson]

Gerson is the non-Jewish Brooks, equally slick and devious but correctly confessioned. Despite all Brooks' efforts, and even granted Armageddonist philo-Semitism, the wacko Christian community cannot heart Brooks.

[virgotex]

I will always think he's an asshole but I might take him more seriously if I had ever once seen him say anything of substance. Seen him state a complex idea or speak to a complex issue in a way that indicated he was actually conversant about it and willing and able to serve his constituency instead of himself.

With McCain it's always about telling but not showing. I'm not talking about his voting-I'm talking about his understanding and dedication. I don't see it.

[Stefan]

Love this bit from Gerson: "(Can anyone doubt that the past political association of McCain with a right-wing terrorist would attract some attention?)"

Um, yes, I kind of can doubt that, because McCain's actual associations with right-wing terrorists (see, e.g., G. Gordon Liddy, etc.) don't seem to have attracted any attention at all.

[Culture of Truth]

Obama is cheating by being right about everything.

No fair!!!

[slag]

Seriously, McCain wouldn't look as small as he does if Obama didn't keep looking as big as he does. Obama has consistently stayed above the fray this election while McCain has consistently gone below it. Starting from their back-to-back speeches the night Obama won the nomination, Obama spoke with soaring eloquence while McCain gave a typical partisan speech. Put McCain next to Obama, and he does look Lilliputian. But put McCain up next to Bush, Reid, or (dare I say it?) even Hillary, and he looks almost man-sized. In other words...it's the juxtaposition.

[ME]

I don't know why we even bother responding to people like Gerson. He, like many pundits on TV (both left and right) are so obviously not arguing in good faith, that's it seems an exercise in futility to try and engage them. Thank god for PBS. (even the douchebags seem to argue in much better faith when on PBS... no idea why)

[steve duncan]

I understand Obama having a bit of difficulty pushing back on the Ayers issue. The right demonizes Ayers as a terrorist. I came of age during the Viet Nam war. I watched as my draft eligibilty age drew near and the goddamn mess was still raging. And worried. We had rallies and protests and broke windows and raised hell on campus. I lived in Ohio and watched newscasts of National Guardsman gunning down people at Kent State. Oh boy did we raise some more hell about that. A few people took it to another level, like Ayers. Wrong, criminal, people died. Perps were prosecuted. Were they terrorists? I never heard the word bandied about. They were dirty fucking hippies, war protesters, anarchists. Terrorists? So now Obama has to refute he associated with a terrorist. He can't say "Look, times were turbulent, people took protests and anger too far, but to call them terrorists is labeling them inaccurately. There was a war going on, thousands dying, with no end in sight and no apparent government plan to get out. They were angy and desperate and made mistakes but they weren't terrorists like my opponent wants you to think of them. They weren't Islamic jihadists flying planes into buildings. They weren't blowing up federal office buildings and killing hundreds. There needs to be some historical perspective but my opponent's sole motivation is to inflame generational and political tensions. He doesn't want to wage battle with today's problems, he wants to re-fight old battles from the past." Was Ayers a terrorist? I suppose in the strictest sense as we choose to define one today maybe. Can Obama call to question the label? Not without being pilloried for it across the entire media and political spectrum. McCain knows that.

[John B.]

The Gerson quote -- "(Can anyone doubt that the past political association of McCain with a right-wing terrorist would attract some attention?)"

Yes, we can. John McCain has tighter ties to a terrorist than ANY past or present candidate for the White House since Richard Nixon. The terrorist is McCain's pal, radio promoter, and campaign contributor G. Gordon Liddy. Why isn't the press reporting this?

[arithmoquine]

Being a great man should make one more successful in difficult times than in easy times. One of the right's favorites is Winston Churchill who was (if I know my history, which I don't) unsuccessful politically until World War II when he became Prime Minister and saw Britain through some of its darkest times. So, the whole construction that McCain is a victim of difficult times and on the wrong side of history is exactly backwards. People look to good leaders--people with intelligence, good ideas and the political ability to implement them--when times are most difficult, when the tide of history has reached a low ebb. So framing the arguments as a defense of someone whose greatness comes into conflict with or cannot be recognized in these difficult times runs counter to history and common sense.

I think the article can be best summarized as, "The American people don't like my candidate. Waaaah!" Or, perhaps more charitably, "The American people are morons who cannot recognize true greatness when it thrashes about spasmodically before them."

[Righteous Bubba]

Can Obama call to question the label?

In an ideal world, should he? Who cares?

It's not the label but the association here that's bogus.

[mds]

1 - Changed his campaign slogan to "It's my turn, damn it!"

Bob Dole already used it.

What judge wouldn't order Obama to drop out of the race?

Oh, sure, right now that's a joke. I'm still waiting to see how they manage to punt a solid popular and electoral vote Obama victory to SCOTUS. Probably something to do with ACORN and shrieks of massive voter fraud.

[Jemand von Niemand]

A question: Given the 'damage to the brand' created by Cheney / Bush Et Cie... what will the Republican party metastasize into next?

Will it return to it's "roots"; be the party of pre 1964-Goldwater?

Or will it turn out to be a slicker, more well-hidden 'christian' values party?

How long will it take the Usual Media Suspects to start writing pieces that shyly, coquettishly flirt with the Huckabee set? When they're not sighing that President Obama "just didn't live up" to the Village's expectations, that is?

[Righteous Bubba]

Or will it turn out to be a slicker, more well-hidden 'christian' values party?

They can't ditch the stupids and have any hold on power.

[bartkid]

>I mean, uh, I guess McCain is kind of a victim of circumstances

At least he has 7-10 homes and 13 vehicles with which he may console himself.

[actor212]

You know, the way that seeing someone who blew by you on the highway pulled over ten minutes later is sad.

Am I a bad person for gloating over both of these?

[Notorious P.A.T.]

Can anyone doubt that the past political association of McCain with a right-wing terrorist would attract some attention?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0504chapmanmay04,0,6061828.column

[Ralph]

With respect to MoDo's being driven around the bend,

1) She already was

2) Maureen once said on the Daily Show that she and Krugman like to duck out from the office and have a nice civilized daiquiri together once in a while. She sounded tickled to know him.

3) Based on a few other cues and clues, Maureen is not likely to refuse a drink at any hour of the day (pure speculation).

[bill]

"Maybe he is a great man running at the most difficult of times."

Or maybe he's just George W. Bush with skin cancer and bad shoulders: a spoiled and overgrown child with an unresolved Oedipus complex that he wants work out on the international stage and on the taxpayers' nickel.

Get over it, Gerson. If there is justice in the world (not a gimme by any stretch), your beloved party will go down in flames with John McCain in the cockpit--oh, the irony!

[bcf]

The RS article should be required reading before you vote.

I've been showing it around since it came and have bent a few people with it.

The most common observation is that some didn't know anything about McCain's privileged background.

[Mutant Poodle]

McCain confuses, in the John Wooden bromide, activity for achievement. He's always doing something, but very little of it moves his campaign forward.

Plus he is, of course, an unimaginable prick, and over time, that comes through.

[v_viridian]

I'm interested in the voter-registration side, actually. How small do you have to be to kick about how your party will lose if the whole country actually turns out? What part of the definition of "democracy" involves disenfranchising the voters? Presumably the definition given by a man suffering from the onset of senile dementia. My guess is that Obama should be debating Palin tonight, and wouldn't that be special? You betcha!

[LittlePig]

"McThusela is just a victim of soicumstance, n'yuk, n'yuk,n'yuk"

Gerson's just singing for his supper. I hear it is easy if you have no conscience.

[Ginger Yellow]

"He reasonably chose to work for a responsible bailout while hoping the markets would stabilize quickly."

Why is that reasonable? The markets have been in crisis for over a year, on a global basis. Expecting them to right themselves quickly simply because Congress passes a bill is ludicrous over-optimistic. Which is precisely the point - it wasn't a rational decision based on what he could achieve through leadership, it was motivated by image.

[mdh]

Far be it from me to defend McCain, but it was his plane that got hit by the missile. He had just jumped out of a burning plane over a patch of flaming flight deck and you want him to stay and fight the fire?

And that's a fair point, pilots are a valuable minority in the Navy and do need to be kept safe

But for McCain to admit he was worried about his career ambitions ON THAT VERY DAY is small indeed.

(Also, FYI, all Navy pilots overestimate themselves. It's a useful skill in the right circumstances (e.g. air combat). The presidency is not, however, one of those circumstances.)

[actor212]

How small do you have to be to kick about how your party will lose if the whole country actually turns out? What part of the definition of "democracy" involves disenfranchising the voters?

This small:

G O P

[actor212]

The markets have been in crisis for over a year, on a global basis.

Actually, the tanking began in 2003, with the bankruptcy of the Conseco insurance company, who coughed up a furball when the bought out a (this is NOT a joke) mobile home finance company called Green Trees, that was making subprime mortgages.

To mobile home buyers.

You can't get much more subprime than that.

[flounder]

I like how he implies that McCain's ties to G. Gordon Liddy have been fully examined by the naughty MSM.

[Molly Ivors]

Ralph,
She was cheerful about it, actually. Though her framing her column as "how do I get my Nobel?" may have reflected an actual, if fleeting, panic.

[Mr Blifil]

Of course Obama had an easier time of it. Gerson is wise to call our attention to an obvious point, Obama's only in it for the fried chicken, watermelon, and loose, compliant white women.

I mean c'mon, Harvard Law Review? That's not work. That's just preening.