Indy Is Now More Fearful Of A “[Mc]Cain” Than A “Bush”

Here’s a new one: Sen John McCain is even worse than President George W. Bush.  Yes, you did actually just read that.  It’s an interpretation that comes to us courtesy of The Independent’s “crusader under the table” identification expert, Johann Hari:

…McCain is the candidate we should most fear. Not only is he to the right of Bush on a whole range of subjects, he is also the Republican candidate most likely to dispense with Hillary or Barack…

Apparently, it doesn’t take much to scare Mr Hari.  To better face his fears, he might try to develop something of a better sense of political perspective.  For instance, after considering his synopsis on Sen McCain’s “life story”, consider also this even briefer one of this president:

• A son of “Christian fundamentalists”
• fascinated by cowboys and Indians Native Americans and the American West
• too old to get into Annapolis, he passed the entrance exam to get into West Point (a young man with no connections, who was nevertheless recommended by a senator)
• possessor of an explosive temper
• a boxer, sportsman and, in his youth, a “brawler”
• a heavy smoker 
• married well above “his station”
• respected by his son, who decades later said he was terrified of “Dad”
• dreaded missing out on what he was sure would be “his” war
• stationed at times in various “colonial” outposts, such as the Philippines and Panama
• as president didn’t fear to face global adversaries, while also realizing when change was afoot at home
• questioned by many about lacking clear political principles
• upon leaving office, had warned about the growing influence of a corrupting military-industrial cosiness which as president he had inadvertently helped bring about — at least partly because as a career soldier he had experienced years of parsimonious administrations and Congresses that had spent so little on the military not only could the military not be everywhere it might have been needed, but it really could hardly have been anywhere; then virtually overnight to his horror he learned also that liberating a world required having on hand not just rifles, troops, tanks, aircraft carriers, planes, food and fuel, but something called landing craft . . . in assembly line thousands.  (And why the heck hadn’t anyone thought of procuring those also in 1940?  Well, they didn’t even have rifles.)

Given such traits in that president, and what Mr Hari and his Indy so fear now, it’s hard to believe that Mr Hari or his paper wouldn’t work themselves into night terrors even at the second coming of that president: Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Nonetheless, Mr Hari concludes, worriedly:

…If we don’t start warning that the Real McCain is not the Real McCoy, we might sleepwalk into four more years of Republicanism.

But with all of his many similar “faults”, if a President McCain were to prove anywhere nearly as capable as a Dwight Eisenhower, America could only consider itself lucky.  However, Mr Hari and the Indy will then just have to manage somehow without much sleep for at least four years. 

Then again, this Indy “commentary” must be accurate, given that it is apparently mostly based on a single “biography”, a book that, Mr Hari tells us, offers this interesting TR “foreign policy” finding:

…His most thorough biographer – and recent supporter – Matt Welch concludes: “McCain’s programme for fighting foreign wars would be the most openly militaristic and interventionist platform in the White House since Teddy Roosevelt…

Except for the small fact, of course, that President Theodore Roosevelt never actually presided over a major foreign war.  Unlike many of his successors, that is.  (The Philippine insurrection was rooted in the Spanish-American war commenced under William McKinley.)  So while Mr Hari (and Mr Welch) might be riddled with various worries about another possible Mr Roosevelt, again, should Sen McCain somewhat resemble him, another TR seems unlikely to be the end of the world.