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Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman speaks to author Matt Welch on the subject of his book, McCain: The Myth of a Maverick. What is so striking is how this myth of being a maverick has continued long into his congressional career and is exhibited in the votes he’s receiving from the anti-war crowd despite being more pro-war than any other GOP candidate.
It’s really interesting that in the primaries so far, if you look at the exit polls, among people who voted in the GOP primaries who consider themselves antiwar, anti-the-Iraq-war, and among voters who consider themselves angry at George Bush—and that’s a quote—and among independents, McCain is beating his opponents by two-to-one. If you actually look at people who describe themselves as just Republicans, McCain has not yet won a single primary. So he is basically winning the GOP primaries on the back of the antiwar vote, when in fact he would be the most explicitly interventionist president since Teddy Roosevelt, and he certainly makes George Bush look gun-shy by comparison.
Seriously, that’s taking voting against your own interests way too far.
Transcripts of video below the fold. Full program and transcripts available here.
MATT WELCH: John McCain, being the third generation here with a lot of expectations on him, rebelled against those expectations. He finished near the bottom of his class, 894th out of 899 at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. And he was a real sort of maverick in the kind of Top Gun way, always getting into trouble, sneaking off to drink beer and smoke cigarettes and date strippers, and had a pretty colorful kind of straining-at-the-leash type of life, because he knew he didn’t really have a choice but to fulfill his sort of family’s destiny.
And he became a flyboy in the Navy and was involved in one of the worst—and in fact, I think the worst—Navy sort of tragedy after World War II, which was the Forrestal fire in Vietnam, which killed 130-plus men. He tumbled off the nose of his airplane as it was sort of exploding on the deck of this aircraft carrier in Vietnam. And then on his—I believe his fifth mission was flying over Vietnam on a—Hanoi on a bombing run and was shot out of the sky and, of course, became a prisoner of war for five-and-a-half years, where he, you know, withstood torture with great bravery and distinction. He eventually cracked, like most prisoners of war do under the duress, and taped some statements, you know, disparaging his country and apologizing for his crimes, but stuck it out and then came back to the US in ’73 and became the Navy liaison to the Senate and eventually started his political career in 1982.
AMY GOODMAN: And that political career, he started in Congress?
MATT WELCH: He started in Congress. He humorously—he had divorced his first wife, married a young woman named Cindy—Cindy McCain now, Cindy Hensley. Her father was—owned the exclusive beer distributorship for Budweiser in Maricopa County in Arizona, and so was—had a lot of money. And he was shopping around basically for a congressional seat. On the day that Congressman John Rhodes announced that he was resigning—or actually even before he announced, but on the day that he decided that he was resigning from his seat, John told Cindy, you know, buy a house in the district. So he kind of moved to Arizona with the explicit idea that he would immediately run for Congress and then use that as a springboard to run for the Senate seat when Barry Goldwater retired in 1986.
And what’s very little sort of understood—one of many things that’s little understood about John McCain is that from the beginning he was spending crazy amounts of money. You know, he’s this champion of campaign finance, but he wildly outspent his opponents in Arizona time and time again, especially at the beginning of his career, with his father-in-law’s money, with money from Charles Keating and money from other people, and built up this political career and ended up going to the Senate and becoming the maverick we all know and love.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s interesting, Matt Welch, looking at the talk show programs yesterday, one of the commentators is Torie Clarke, Victoria Clarke, former Pentagon spokesperson. She was on George Stephanopoulos’s show yesterday on ABC talking about McCain, but they didn’t identify her as a former press secretary for John McCain—is that right?—in his early years.
MATT WELCH: Yeah. You know, I think that’s pretty standard fare, regrettably, in Beltway talk shows. Everyone has long and tangled relationships with everybody else, and people just don’t really feel like revealing it one way or the other.
But, you know, getting back to his military history, this is something, again, that is not very well understood. Not only were his parents—father and grandfather in the military, but his father used to go around giving these lectures about how, you know, the naval gap between the US and the Soviet Union was threatening democracy, how we—his nickname was Mr. Sea Power. You know, he would recite British colonialist poetry around the dinner table. They were constantly talking about the necessity for just a huge US navy to guarantee the world’s security. That is the background that John McCain was just marinating in from the time he was a child. And for much of that period, whenever his father or grandfather was not out at sea, they were living on Capitol Hill, usually in some Washington, D.C. capacity. So he was sitting around the breakfast table with senators and congressmen from the time he was a kid. There’s this big notion that he’s a man of the people, which is actually the name of a biography of him, when in fact, down the line, he’s been very much an elitist his entire life, for both good and for ill. He has just been surrounded by, you know, top historians, top senators and congressmen and top military brass.
But this tradition that he comes from is incredibly interventionist and expansionist. It’s really interesting that in the primaries so far, if you look at the exit polls, among people who voted in the GOP primaries who consider themselves antiwar, anti-the-Iraq-war, and among voters who consider themselves angry at George Bush—and that’s a quote—and among independents, McCain is beating his opponents by two-to-one. If you actually look at people who describe themselves as just Republicans, McCain has not yet won a single primary. So he is basically winning the GOP primaries on the back of the antiwar vote, when in fact he would be the most explicitly interventionist president since Teddy Roosevelt, and he certainly makes George Bush look gun-shy by comparison.
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John McCian has been getting the anti war vote …..WTF ? how is this happened ? are Americans really that DUMB ?
i don’t believe this, the MSM has not reported these claims… until the corporate media reports on something it is nothing but gossip. therefore, mccain is still a straightalking maverick. facts be damned.
/snark off
andy @ 1:
yeppers
This is what astounds me when there are so many individuals who post here and claim, ‘If Hillary gets the nomination I’m voting McCain! At least you know where he stands.’ There are so many things wrong with that philosophy, the atoms in my poor brain are trying to force themselves from my skull.
The man has spun around almost entirely in terms of his views in the last few years, and that’s ignoring his typical Republican policies: lower taxes for the rich, which will ‘trickle down’; get rid of the damn immigrants; kill the damn Muslims in the Middle East; fuck abortion; fuck gay civil unions; fuck civil rights trumping national security. I could go on all day. Men like McCain are bound to bankrupt the U.S. once and for all.
Is this better or worse than anti-war Dems voting for Clinton?
Anti-war liberals keep pulling the lever for pro-war hawk and Bush enabler Hillary Clinton, too. If Maverick and Billary are the Repub and Dem candidates, the neocon red carpet to the Oval Office is well & truly assured.
Yeah… No compromisin’ McCain! He “won’t compromise on torture”! And of course, by “won’t”, he meant “will”. Why? Cause he’s a maverick!!!
[Deleted]
Meat @ 4:
Those are Hillary policies as well. Don’t be fooled by the tears and her talking out of both sides of her mouth. Look at her voting record. Then ask why she didn’t even read the NIE before sending American boys and girls into a meat grinder. Ask her how she feels about the one million dead Iraqis and four million ethnically-cleansed refugees, and whether her failure to even mention them makes her a racist, or just a liberal without a conscience.
Yes. Yes, we could.
Why are these Democracy Now things always aimed at Republicans? And when someone points out the blatant lies put out by Hillary and Bill, they are shouted down, ridiculed and ignored? It’s a two way street people.
The same cabal thats been supporting Bush Co is behind McCain.
I said last year McCain will be the Pub front runner.
And I am going to stick with that prediction.
ConcernedCanuck @ 9:
The truth is that the people in the media (both sides) have unwittingly internalized the process so thoroughly they do not even know they are mere mindless cogs in a larger and ominous corporate/state machine.
I suspect we’re talking about the some of the same geniuses who still think Saddam was behind 9/11.
Good for McCain, though. Convincing the ignoramuses to vote for you is half the battle.
L.A. Confidential @ 10:
Hey picture this ……McCAIN/GIULLIANI….. ticket, the neo-cons were behind Ghoul, now they’re flocking to McCainiac.
Meat @ 4:
I agree. If the anti-war Republicans are voting for McCain because they feel he is some how anti-war himself then they could be in for a big surprise. Just by looking at McCain’s background we can see that he will go to any lengths militarily and will tax and spend at will to accomplish his objectives. Hell, even the American Conservative Magazine has a cartoon of McCain holding the world in his hands and gazing at it like a potential Dictator.
The mere mention of “Keating” is enough to make me hold my nose and say Pee-yoo.
andy @ 13:
No matter who’s President Americans are looking for guarantees.
Unfortunately, there are none.
Good for kind-hearted Hillary, too. Her convincing the bleeding heart libs to draw a line in the sand and rubber-stamp Bush’s racist criminal war policies is the other half of the battle.
Mission. Accomplished.
BTW yesterday was “Colin Powell Day.” Funny how that day five years ago has been lost down the memory hole, but then the attention deficit and collective amnesia of the American people pretty much guarantees that even blogs like C&L will remember Britney’s shaved head more vividly than the day America waved a vial of detergent around and sold the world a gigantic LIE that Hillary applauded with a standing ovation.
Oh, it’s true. It’s damned true.
First Ronny Ray-gun, then Dubyah and now this insane warmonging old fool. Man you Repubs love your phony fucking “heroes”.
I’m having a dream, a good dream but a dream all the same.
Hillary gets the nomination, Barack is bankrolled by Bloomberg and makes a successful independent run.
Well a fella can dream can’t he?
Mike Mid City @ 19:
In order to dream you need to be asleep.
Well got to go. The computer isn’t going to shovel snow for me.
People who are against the war are backing John McCain?? I don’t get that. I really don’t understand how that works. I can only imagine that it comes from tsomebullshit assumption (which is dreadfully wrong) that, because he was a POW, he would be more restrained in committing military troops to combat. I don’t know where people are getting this ridiculous notion from - McCain has been (second only to Lieberman) one of Bush’s biggest cheerleaders for the war. Like I said, I really don’t get it.
Samson- @ 3:
I’d like to draw your attention to the 2004 Presidential Election. If it wasn’t stolen then the answer is yes. If it was stolen then no, not dumb just screwed.
Someone out here said that McCain is popular among people who don’t pay attention. Might be the most insightful blog comment I’ve ever come across…
L.A. Confidential @ 21:
Silly me, assumed L.A. Confidential was in the sunny So. Cal. location. (ass+u+me) Good thing I’m not voting for a Authorization to use force.
OK, McCain hasn’t been a good Senator… but let’s not get into Swiftboating. He served his country to the best of his abilities in the military– and he deserves some props for that.
Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran. What an honorable human being Mccain is.
gene214 @ 22:
Hopefully, this is good news for dems - plenty of time during the runup to the general election for his crazy war-mongering ways to come into full view.
L.A. Confidential @ 20:
My bad, should have said daydream. It’s like I’m back in the third grade again. I hear and see what is going on in the world but am still looking out the window and thinking about how things should be.
I’ll never understand people voting against their own interests. Like farmers and trailer trash voting for Bush. Who cares about the new backruptcy laws when there are gay people to persecute. The VP, even votes against his own daughter’s best interest, that is just sick.
Sorry, what was the question again?
gene214 @ 22:
By the same measure, Can’t we equally deduce that the majority of Californian liberals are warmongers and war cheerleaders too? Last night most of ‘em pulled the lever for warmonger and war cheerleader Hillary Clinton.
It is a vexing irony.
Blue Lensman @ 28:
Have you people heard the Dem candidates talk? Hillary is just as gung ho to attack and bomb, bomb Iran. Obama wants to open dialogue, after he bomb, bomb, bombs Iran. I’m starting to think these rich American political leaders either are way out of touch with reality, or could give a flying fig what anyone, including the electorate think of them.
Tim @ 27:
That video would be in every commercial for the election if I were in charge of a 527, inter spaced with well timed “My Friends”.
THE REPUBLICANS ARE A NON FACTOR.
Another thing; how does bombing innocent Vietnamese farmers and being a POW who eventually broke make one a hero?The entire image of this this nutty opportunist has been a myth.
gene214 @ 22:
The only explanation is that people are just anti BUSH war and think McCain could handle it better, which is bollox, or they have heard him say “i was against the way Bush went to war” and have misinterpreted that and they actually think he’s anti war, but what he actually meant was he would have sent more soldiers into the meat grinder a lot quicker.
Is our electoral process entering the realm of reality?
Prediction:
Hillary/Bob Kerrey vs. McCain/Huckabee
John @ 26:
I can’t argue with that. However, its not his past military service record that concerns me. What concerns me is his current pro-war position. If he means and ever attempts to carry out what he says then he will almost certainly have to have some sort of forced conscription in place. Even John McCain knows that the U.S. military ground forces are stretched to the breaking point and have almost no reserves left to take on a new conflict. He would also have to know that simply bombing another nation will do nothing but force a retaliation. If voters are looking at McCain like some sort of strategic genius then they are dead wrong.
I hope John McCain is the nominee, because he seems like the one most likely to melt down in the days leading up to the election.
And that can only help Obama (or, well, Hillary)!
John @ 26:
Yeh you have to sympathize with a guy who drops bombs on villages of women and children, but wait oh yeh he was tortured therefore we must worship him, god forbid we don’t worship a victim.
They cant stop the truth from coming out…
Their are patriots and whistleblowers in every state ready to set the record straight.
They know who the real McCain is.
Another scandal..
The scandals surrounding George W. Bush’s pal from Dallas, (HUD) Secretary Alphonso Jackson are now being reported .. Jackson is accused of retaliating against the Philadelphia Housing Authority for refusing to transfer a $2 million property to a land developer tied to –> Pennsylvania Republican Senator and Philadelphia resident Arlen Specter.
Speaking of Myths…
..the case resulted in a congressional investigation of a labyrinth of covert operations involving drug and arms smuggling.
–> not one person has been held accountable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inslaw
Follow the Money.
Follow the Corruption.
It leads through the Justice Department
Stop the war - vote
McCain / Hillary 2008
The average voter is similar to “Bub” the zombie from Day of the Dead.
My wife, an uber-liberal, was rooting for McCain on the repub. side because of something she saw on CNN. Suddenly, “mini-Bush” is a gentle moderate. McCain is a 71 year old neo-con from Hell with nothing to lose. I had to give her the StirFry Pork Slap. ;-)
Tim @ 27:
If we are truly honest, we can at least concede McCain was trying to be funny.
The joke fell flat on it’s face, it was sick and disgusting, totally unfunny, loathesome and shameful. But we can still presume it was off-the-cuff stoopidity and not exactly a policy position.
The same cannot be said of Hillary’s “AYE!” vote on H.J.Res 114.<