Character is Electoral Failure
“It is your character,” John McCain (allegedly – who knows the level of ghost-writing that modern politicians employ) wrote in his 2005 book, “that will make your life happy or unhappy. That is all that really passes for destiny.” Unfortunately, this week, John McCain showed the world that he doesn’t really have any. Character, that is.
McCain, who once called the most despicable elements of the Christian Right “agents of intolerance” and who once stood as a symbol of a maverick Senator who was willing to buck his party line (though some have questioned how true this image was), and who was even considered for the Democratic ticket in 2004, has decided to cozy back up next to the Focus-on-The-Family theocrat types.
McCain’s 2000 campaign was bitterly opposed by Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and other televangelist demagogues, who backed Bush. Recently, Dobson expressed the desire that McCain should not be the Republican nominee, presumably intending to back Brownback or Romney.
Thus McCain, the presumptive front-runner in both polls and the invisible primary, in order to form an effective governing coalition and to head off potential problems down the road is seriously engaged in an high-profile effort to court Christian conservatives, instead of sticking his truly personal instincts that the right-wing theocrats, or Christianists as Andrew Sullivan would call them, are intolerant bigots at best. I am not so naive to think that politicians do not make compromises with their values in order to win elections. Then again, not all politicians write high-minded tracts about “Why Character is Destiny” or “Why Courage Matters” either.
McCain, who once called the most despicable elements of the Christian Right “agents of intolerance” and who once stood as a symbol of a maverick Senator who was willing to buck his party line (though some have questioned how true this image was), and who was even considered for the Democratic ticket in 2004, has decided to cozy back up next to the Focus-on-The-Family theocrat types.
McCain’s 2000 campaign was bitterly opposed by Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and other televangelist demagogues, who backed Bush. Recently, Dobson expressed the desire that McCain should not be the Republican nominee, presumably intending to back Brownback or Romney.
Thus McCain, the presumptive front-runner in both polls and the invisible primary, in order to form an effective governing coalition and to head off potential problems down the road is seriously engaged in an high-profile effort to court Christian conservatives, instead of sticking his truly personal instincts that the right-wing theocrats, or Christianists as Andrew Sullivan would call them, are intolerant bigots at best. I am not so naive to think that politicians do not make compromises with their values in order to win elections. Then again, not all politicians write high-minded tracts about “Why Character is Destiny” or “Why Courage Matters” either.
