McCain's John Lewis Problem

When someone you admire, a civil rights leader whom you yourself call "an American hero," compares you to George Wallace and calls on you to change your campaign tactics in the name of public safety:

1) You can take umbrage, and try to make an issue of how terribly unfair it is to compare you to a vicious segregationist like George Wallace, and while you're on the topic try to make your political opponent into the villain for not "repudiating" the Wallace comparison.

or

2) You can stop acting like George Wallace.

McCain's response to Lewis is revealing, not simply for the dishonesty and political opportunism that McCain now reveals on a daily basis, but for what it reveals about McCain's value system. He takes offense, or purports to, at being compared to a racist. He utterly ignores the point of Lewis's comparison, which is that his rhetoric, like Wallace's, is stirring up passions that may end in civil violence or even bloodshed. The slur against his character stings McCain. The call to civic duty, and the warning of public danger, does not even register. McCain is deaf to it.

This is the essence of John McCain: a confusion of private virtue, or "character," with public virtue. It is more important to him to establish that he is not, personally, a racist, than it is to protect the common good. McCain's candidacy, and his political career, is premised on the idea that a politician's sense of individual honor will benefit the nation at large. The conduct of his campaign puts the lie to that idea.

McCain's campaign tactics haven't been terribly consonant with personal honor, either, but personal failings can always be rationalized or repented. Once a politician does public harm, the consequences are out of his control. No repentance will help the victims if McCain's reckless and inflammatory tactics bring his fellow Americans to harm. John McCain will have to look at himself in the mirror after this campaign, but I couldn't care less what he finds there. He will only have to live with himself; the rest of us will have to live with what he's wrought.

Before Anyone Gets Hurt

McCain and Palin have turned a dark corner in their election rhetoric, and as many others have said, they are creating real danger.

They are actively encouraging the notion that Barack Obama may secretly be a danger to America, a friend to terrorists, a terrorist himself. This goes beyond political slurs. It is the language that the violent use to justify their violence. Obama is being presented as someone who poses a danger, someone whom the violent need to harm in "self-defense." And it only takes a few weak minds to accept the paranoid fantasy and act on it.

McCain has already gone beyond the acceptable bounds of American political discourse. And he has done it at a moment of national unrest, as the economic crisis creates fear and anxiety. A historical moment like this would be dangerous enough without McCain. The risk of mob violence would be with us now even if McCain were not actively increasing it. During times of uncertainty, mobs look for scapegoats to turn on. McCain has chosen to offer the public identifiable scapegoats.

I am afraid, not only for Obama but for his Secret Service detail, for Obama's volunteers in the field, for the staff at ACORN (who are being demonized every day), for Senator Dodd and Congressman Frank, whom McCain has now explicitly accused of crimes (as "willing co-conspirators" in the failure of our banking sector). I hope no harm comes to anyone. But I dread what may happen if some angry hooligans pass an Obama field office twenty minutes after Palin has told them that Obama wants to destroy the country.

If the fire McCain that is playing with actually catches, if people are burned, there will be enormous grief and enormous rage. And if something terrible happens, few of us will be able to think clearly about those responsible. So it's time to think the worst-case scenario through now.

If McCain's campaign actually incites the violence it is so close to inciting, his political career needs to end. That day. Not simply his lost campaign, but his Senate career, his speaking engagements, his public life. He needs to resign in disgrace, and he needs to be made to see that necessity.

There cannot be violent retribution for the merchants of violence, if we want to keep our America America. And laws regulating campaign speech will go horribly wrong. But the political retribution must be swift, complete and unrelenting.

No politician who undermines public safety for personal gain has any place in our national life. Every politician should fear an outbreak of civil violence against his or her fellow Americans; who can speak of loving our country but not dread that? If mere patriotism, mere responsibility, mere human decency are not enough, politicians must fear for themselves and their careers. Every American politician should live in holy dread of inciting a mob, and every politician should know that raising a mob and losing control of it means exile from American politics forever.

God forbid that any of my fears come to pass. I hope McCain will think better of what he is doing, and stop. I hope that we will get through the coming month in peace. But if the worst happens, McCain must leave public office, Palin must leave public office, and Steve Schmidt, their campaign strategist, must never be employed in politics or government again. And steps need to be taken, calmly and rationally, to ensure those outcomes: a new public organization, including a political action committee and a fund-raising arm, aimed at removing those malefactors from office, and at deterring any future politician from taking such depraved risks with the public safety.

Words have consequences, and John McCain has a public trust. A politician who becomes an enemy of the civil peace needs to be punished, not by more violence and not by the law, but by the patriotism of his fellow Americans.

McCain Camp Denounces Arithemetic as "Partisan," "Elitist"

John McCain's presidential campaign denounced a recent poll by ABC and the Washington Post as biased by "partisan and elitist arithmetic."

"The transparently liberal claim that 52 is larger than 43 is just another example of bias by The New York Times, which is now a pro-Obama advocacy organization," said Steve Schmidt, a key McCain staffer. When reminded that the Washington Post, and not the Times, had commissioned the poll, Schmidt responded, "You are in the tank, sir! The tank! Just like Dukakis!"

A press release from McCain/Palin '08 claimed that

"No matter how Obama and the his fans in the press try to fool the American people, 43 is still more than 52, just the way it always has been. It may not be the math that liberal elitists like to peddle in their exclusive colleges, but 43 is almost three hundred and seven points more than 52 is. We welcome a continuing debate."

"In the end, this election comes down to character," said a McCain spokesman who asked not to be named. "Do the American people relate better to a genuine hero like John McCain, or to some aloof, intellectual grade-school teacher who taught them to add and subtract? If an East-coast liberal ever made you ask permission to go to the bathroom, I think the choice is pretty clear."

In related stories, the McCain camp pointed out that Rick Davis's business relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ended in August of 2008, "which was more than fifteen years ago," and that John McCain's 72 years make him forty-one years younger than Barack Obama.

McCain Gets Tense

So McCain claimed that we have drawn American troops down to pre-surge levels. This is not true, nor will it be true soon.

When confronted with the error, McCain's campaign said that any criticism was simply quibbling over "verb tenses."

Verb tenses. Riiight.

Verb tenses of course are only grammatical details, and not really important. For example, the difference between the past tense (or in this case, the present perfect) and the future tense is really extremely pedantic.

What is the difference, for example, "I have paid you," and "I will pay you?" None that I can see. Only a schoolmarm, or a linguist like Noam Chomsky, could tell the difference.

What is the difference between "We have eaten," and "We will eat?" Between "I have left her for you," and "I will leave her for you?" Between "We have found a cure," and "We will find a cure?" It's really just a grammar thing, after all.

The difference between things that you have done and things that you will do, or might do, or would do, is ultimately only a grammatical detail. What do quibbles like that matter? (And while we're at it, what about the mathematical cavil in the complaint, with its third-grade, New-Math obsession with academic concepts like "more" and "less?")

If you want to say you have accomplished the mission, or won the war, is it really so different from saying that you will accomplish the mission, or that you will win the war, someday, if everything goes the way you plan?

What's catching McCain isn't just verb tense, of course. It's also something that pedants call grammatical mood: the difference between verbs used in the indicative mood (to describe the world as it is and is not), and the subjunctive mood (to describe the world as it is not, but might be, other under circumstances). But that's just academic trivia, really. English seldom makes the subjunctive distinction grammatically anymore, and we can all just go along using the indicative verbs for everything: things we have done, things we will do, things we would do if we had remembered our wallet, things we hope to do, things we actually did do except it was in a dream.

The election should not be about hairsplitting grammatical points such as the difference between what we have achieved and what we hope to achieve, or the difference between strategies that have succeeded and strategies that might, or the difference between people who have been killed and people who will be killed. It's time to leave schoolroom distinctions behind, and return our focus to the real world.