On The Bus With McCain: Sights and Sounds
Retail Politics and The Bus
By Adam C Posted in 2008 — Comments (24) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
In future posts, I'll talk about some of the topics, issues, and policies that Sen. McCain is talking about and asked about as he shakes hands on holds town hall meetings.
Right now, I'd like to describe the experience of doing New Hampshire retail politics. So we're riding around in this vehicle. It's got some comfy, swivel chairs in the front section, a snack bar and mini-fridge, and a backroom where Sen. McCain holds court during the trip from event to event. There are TVs in the front and back room.
When I first got on the bus, Sen. McCain was directing an aide to make sure the OSU-Michigan game was on while we were traveling from Littleton, NH to Haverhill, NH. After the correct satellite channel was found, Sen. McCain and the 8 reporters got snug around the (too small for 8 people) table in the backroom. For the whole 30-45 minute ride, Sen. McCain and the reporters talked about everything from his favorite book (For Whom the Bell Tolls) and anti-war movies (McCain's choice for most effective is All Quiet On the Western Front) to whether McCain thinks Hillary would be as respectful to McCain as McCain is to her (he thinks she will be).
At a town hall meeting in Haverhill, NH, McCain shines. Sen. McCain's best asset is Sen. McCain. He is very hard to dislike in person. He answers your questions without spinning it into a slightly different question that he wanted to answer. He shows humility and character in his speaking style. It's no wonder Sen. McCain won the NH primary in 2000. To get a feel for a McCain townhall, here is footage of an early one. I'll get up some specific footage of McCain speaking on immigration in a future story.
Finally, talking with several reporters I was surprised to hear how differently the campaigns deal with reporters. McCain and Edwards seem to be the most open to talking to reporters. Hillary and Rudy seem to be the least accessible. The fact that McCain lets 8-10 reporters onto his bus to have what functionally is free flowing conversation (where reporters seem to run out of questions) is a testimony to his belief in transparency.
[UPDATE] For a different perspective on the same bus ride, check out Meghan McCain's blog, (which is definitely hipper and more exciting than my take).
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focus on New Hampshire.
There is a new Research 2000 poll out that puts McCain in 5th place. Romney 27, Huckabee 18, Giuliani 16, Thompson 10 and McCain 6.
McCain is doing better in New Hampshire, where it looks like he is tied with Giuliani at about 16 points and behind Romney with 34 points.
I wonder how the whole Michigan convention is going to come out. I read something that indicated that McCain would win if Michigan holds a convention but would lose to either Giuliani or Romney if Michigan holds a primary.
Is it possible that Michigan will hold a convention before the New Hampshire primary? If so, maybe McCain could get a "bounce" out of a victory there and hope for a 2nd place showing in New Hampshire.
The Left thinks that the "axis of evil" is Wal-Mart, Haliburton and Enron.
His response was an emphatic No, we have not considered conceding Iowa. Then he talked about the fact that the campaign couldn't rule it out in the future depending on what happens.
But I don't think Novak is correct that an announcement of formal surrender is around the corner.
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The main reason why conservatives are suspicious of John McCain has little to do with "media accessability." The fact that McCain makes himself available to reporters and bloggers is nice. But it doesn't do anything to mitigate the objections that conservatives have with him.
The core problem with John McCain is that he is always "reaching out" to Democrats at the worse possible times for the Republican party and for the country.
Take judicial nominations, as an example. When the Republicans won back the US Senate in the November 2002 elections, most of us conservatives breathed a sigh of relief. We read about how the Democrat Senate (put in power by the Jim Jeffords party switch) was blocking Bush's nominees to the federal court of appeals. With the victories of Norm Coleman and Saxby Chambliss in 2002, we thought that we would get Bush's conservative nominees confirmed.
But that's when the Democrats introduced their filibuster strategy. The first person to be a victim of this strategy by the Democrats was Estrata, Bush's nominee to the DC court of appeals. That's when discussions about using the Byrd option (also known as the Constituional option or the Nuclear option) began.
The problem the Republicans had was that they only had a 51 Republicans to the Democrats' 49. They knew that Lincoln Chafee would probably side with the Democrats on a vote on the Byrd option, which would be used to give Bush's judicial nominees an up or down vote. If John McCain votes with the Democrats too, the Democrats have 51 votes to prevent Bush's nominees from getting confirmed.
Estrata wasn't the only Bush nominee to get filibustered either. Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen also got the treatment.
Many Republicans spoke loudly about the injustice of a party that had just lost the US Senate blocking nominees to the federal court of appeals using the 60 vote cloture rule (Rule 22 of the US Senate).
But during the 2003-2004 filibusters, John McCain never once joined his fellow Republicans in denouncing the Democrats' tactics. He was quiet.
Then in November 2004, Bush got reelected; Tom Daschle got defeated and the Republicans increased their numbers from 51 to 55. That's when conservatives concerned about the direction of our federal courts breathed another sigh of relief.
The question was, however, would the Democrats, reduced in numbers now to 45, be able to find 6 Republicans to vote with them against the Byrd option and be allowed to continue filibustering Bush's nominees. Senator Chuck Schumer said on the floor of the Senate that he hoped 6 Republicans could be found to join with Democrats so that Bush's nominees wouldn't get "rubber stamped."
John McCain was the first Republican US Senator to join Chuck Schumer's plea for the continued right to filibuster Bush's judicial nominees.
Even Arlen Specter didn't public join Chuck Schumer and the far Left the way John McCain did.
Fortunately, the Democrats feared that the Republicans might have 50 votes to end judicial filibusters even with McCain jumping ship and joining the Left on this issue. So, the Democrats allowed some of Bush's nominees to get 60 votes on cloture, while insisting that other Bush's nominees not get an up or down vote.
When you win elections, you are supposed to be able to deliver. "Elections have consequences," say those who defend McCain's 1993 vote to elevate Ruth Bader Ginsberg to the US Supreme Court.
Do elections only have consequences when the Left wins but not when the Right wins?
The Left thinks that the "axis of evil" is Wal-Mart, Haliburton and Enron.
I'm curious to know who you do support, given your position that McCain too often reaches out to Democrats? Who among the leading candidates has demonstrated a more conservative record?
That's a true word about McCain. I like him, especially on the war, but I'll be danged if I understand some of his positions.
Pam
I don't agree with everything he says (but whenever does that happen with any candidate?), but his plain and direct talk is outstanding.
And there's no better candidate when it comes to winning the war.
And there's no better candidate when it comes to winning the war.
I'm not at all sure about that. McCain seems to think that if we treat terrorist prisoners with kid gloves, the terrorists will treat captured US soldiers with kid gloves. Common sense tells us that this is incorrect.
Also, using agressive interrogation techniques has already prevented terrorist attacks. But John McCain insists that we not use any interrogation tactics that could be "demeaning" or "humiliating."
Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney seem to be much more sober in their attitudes about the war on terror. They don't seem to suffer from MME, "Mainstream Media Envy," the way John McCain does.
The easiest way to explain McCain's Leftish positions on the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, the judicial filibusters of Bush's judicial nominees, Global Warming, Amnesty for illegal immigrants and so on is that McCain doesn't like to be on the bad side of any issue in the eyes of Tim Russert and Chris Matthews.
That's a bad character trait to have in a president.
The Left thinks that the "axis of evil" is Wal-Mart, Haliburton and Enron.
...there's a whole lot more to the GWOT than that, and McCain is, in fact, one of the strongest.
Giuliani and Thompson also have the appearance of being strong. Romney, though? PLEASE explain what the heck makes you include that name there.
I'm just pointing out that when you listen to the Giuliani, Romney, Thompson and McCain, John McCain comes off like someone who's more interested in pleasing Amnesty International than he is in preventing terrorist attacks.
McCain, as a member of the US Senate, is certainly familiary with the case where a high ranking Al-Qaeda leader sang like a bird about his fellow terrorists once he was subjected to 90 seconds of waterboarding. But McCain wanted the newly confirmed Attorney General to come out against waterboarding completely.
People always like to bring up how McCain was a POW and a reason to give McCain a free pass on national security issues. But McCain should know that North Vietnam, like Nazi Germany, didn't obey basic standards of human decency regardless of how well we treated their captured.
McCain is just out to lunch on most issues. The only reason why he even has a chance is because he was a prisoner of war over 30 years ago.
The Left thinks that the "axis of evil" is Wal-Mart, Haliburton and Enron.
I know you are a McCain hater, but even so, don't you think that it's a bit over the top to lecture him on how the North Vietnamese treated POWs? If you listen to him, he understands very well that people like that are not going to always keep the Geneva Convention. Those are not the audience - he is seeking to convince the rest of the world that we are the good guys. That is something quite valuable in war - the more people understand that you are good fighting evil, the more help you are going to get. That's what someone who understands war gets - and you don't seem to understand at all.
I didn't think it was possible to miss the point of McCain's position so entirely, but for Jeff E. and AngelM somehow did. You can disagree with McCain's position, but at least try to understand it.
Thanks for this report, Adam. It reminds me that I have to give again to McCain.
For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection.
Waterboarding a few fanatics is not going to win us any wars. Remember this - it was McCain who was the first to push for the surge. He understood right from the start that more boots were needed on the ground while Rummy was being all cute and trying to find new and funky ways to win the war. And Bush let him because Bush himself knew very little about how to win a war. The do we/don't we torture is such a small part of the overall picture.
We need someone who understand was. We need John McCain. We had two presidents in a row who found ways to get out of fighting. Do we really want to go with a third? I don't.
And, yes, I do know that Ron Paul is also a veteran and good for him on that, but he's made it clear that he is not interested in using military power to make us safer.
Waterboarding a few fanatics is not going to win us any wars.
Straw man argument. No one is suggesting that waterboarding a few fanatics is going to win us any wars.
But clearly, we already know that waterboarding has given us intelligence data that has prevented terrorist attacks. McCain refuses to accept the idea that waterboarding might be used in circumstances where innocent lives could be saved.
But then, in a Newsweek interview, McCain tries to have it both ways. He says that the President could always violate the law if he thought that waterboarding or some other technique could gain us information that could save an American city from being nuked.
Great! McCain is endorsing that the President be allowed to violate the law just so he can engage in moral preening and pretent that he's against torture whereas other Republicans are in favor of it.
The Left thinks that the "axis of evil" is Wal-Mart, Haliburton and Enron.
I think this whole 'waterboarding gave us valuable info' is nothing more than a KnownFact - I have read in more than one place (and I don't mean liberal media) that most of what was given was garbage and made up crap. I'd like to see if someone can prove me wrong, but for now I am a skeptic.
Conservatives know, while liberals pretend they don't know, that agressive interrogation techniques have prevented terrorist attacks.
But in this column The Truth about Torture by Charles Krauthammer, Krauthammer discusses the apparent hypocrisy in McCain's position.
I have just made what will be characterized as the pro-torture case contra McCain by proposing two major exceptions carved out of any no-torture rule: the ticking time bomb and the slow-fuse high-value terrorist. McCain supposedly is being hailed for defending all that is good and right and just in America by standing foursquare against any inhuman treatment. Or is he?
According to Newsweek, in the ticking time bomb case McCain says that the president should disobey the very law that McCain seeks to pass--under the justification that "you do what you have to do. But you take responsibility for it." But if torturing the ticking time bomb suspect is "what you have to do," then why has McCain been going around arguing that such things must never be done?
As for exception number two, the high-level terrorist with slow-fuse information, Stuart Taylor, the superb legal correspondent for National Journal, argues that with appropriate legal interpretation, the "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" standard, "though vague, is said by experts to codify . . . the commonsense principle that the toughness of interrogation techniques should be calibrated to the importance and urgency of the information likely to be obtained." That would permit "some very aggressive techniques . . . on that small percentage of detainees who seem especially likely to have potentially life-saving information." Or as Evan Thomas and Michael Hirsh put it in the Newsweek report on McCain and torture, the McCain standard would "presumably allow for a sliding scale" of torture or torture-lite or other coercive techniques, thus permitting "for a very small percentage--those High Value Targets like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--some pretty rough treatment."
But if that is the case, then McCain embraces the same exceptions I do, but prefers to pretend he does not. If that is the case, then his much-touted and endlessly repeated absolutism on inhumane treatment is merely for show.
McCain hasn't represented himself honestly on the issue of aggressive interrogation. Either he is pretending that such interrogation has never provided us actionable intelligence, and former CIA director George Tenet has indicated that these techniques have had that affect, or he's trying to have it both ways. Neither is a good harbinger of an effective president on the war on terror.
The Left thinks that the "axis of evil" is Wal-Mart, Haliburton and Enron.
You haven't answered my question. I was looking for proof that torture has gotten us valuable info in the war on Terror. An opinion piece by a member of the Punditocracy is not worth much on that score.
If you had read the entire column, you would have understood why conservatives claim, correctly, that waterboarding has already prevented terrorist attacks. I can't read the column for you.
The Left thinks that the "axis of evil" is Wal-Mart, Haliburton and Enron.
Of course I read the article. I still don't see it - you are probably thinking of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed supposedly saying something useful after being waterboarded. We have no proof of that that I have ever seen. It's just a KnownFact. If you have proof other than an opinion column of the Punditocracy, I'd be happy to have a look at it.
There is a reference to the Israelis getting something useful out of torturing a terrorist, but I'm sure that went well beyond waterboarding.
to keep your mouth shut from time to time?
You don't have to start yapping every time someone praises McCain.
last time someone said something like that to someone else, that someone else threatened to shoot that someone with a bow and arrow like an Indian.
"But McCain should know that North Vietnam, like Nazi Germany, didn't obey basic standards of human decency regardless of how well we treated their captured."
Contrary to what you seem to think, we have always known that many of our enemies don't follow the Geneva Conventions regarding torture of prisoners.
That's often WHY (as in the present conflict) they ARE our enemies -- you know?
Because they are criminals who seek the route to power by dehumanizing and destroying people. That's what torture IS.
McCain knows this better than most.
He was held by the North Vietnamese for more than 5 years much of that time in solitary confinement and was tortured physically and mentally for much of that time, to the extent that he still cannot lift his arms above his shoulders or perform many simple actions that most of us take for granted.
"McCain seems to think that if we treat terrorist prisoners with kid gloves, the terrorists will treat captured US soldiers with kid gloves. Common sense tells us that this is incorrect."
Again, since he had the experience and you didn't, I doubt very much that McCAin's opposition to torture is based on the idea that our enemy will reciprocate if we trat them well when in captivity. I've heard this argument many time and it strikes me as idiotic -- even when McCain makes it.
The enemy tortures because they want to, because they can, because they like it. And I hate to say it, but that's the same reason we torture. And that's why we dont do it -- or we didn't until some jacked-up bureaucrats decided to act out their James Bond/24 fantasies about what was OK and what wasn't.
There is a case to be made for the utility of torture (I don't happen to agree with it, but I can see why some do) but you are not making your case by saying that McCain's personal experience is irrelevant.
To tske the most recent cases, our soldiers were tortured and often killed by their captors in wwII (by the Japanese) and by the North Vietnamese in the Vietnam War.
In the case of the japanese, they tortured our soliers because they believed that someone who surrendered, rather than fighting to the death, was not honorable and hence could be tortured and killed for the entertainment of the captors. These tortures were done to show the weakness of the enemy and the power of the Japanese. The vietnamese tortured John Mccain and others to get them to make and sign admissions of guilt in committing war crimes ( the North Vietnamese envisioned show trials and executions of our pilots but these were prevented by Nixon -- yeah that guy -- who insisted on repatriation) and also (it's clear from the comments made to our soldiers by the torturers) that they enjoyed inflicting pain on helpless Americans.
Notice something here? The torture is not in pursuit of information. In other words, it's not done for purposes that might possibly be seen as worthwhile or legitimate. Rather it's done for other purposes --of state policy, obtaining fake confessions, incriminating people, terrorizing populations, revenge, and pursuing ideas of the inferiority of people, people who can be tortured by the state.
Torture, in other words, should never be part of war. This is what McCain is saying. Furthermore, McCain's concern, as is mine, is with the torturer -- not the torturee. It's with the effect of permitting torture to be state policy on the conduct of war, the military, the population in general.
Personally, I would much rather that we executed and killed these savages on the battlefield or assassinated them in actions rather than capturing them and then trying to extract cooperation or information from them. Again, this is because of the effect on our people and society -- not on the enemy. I'm sure McCain has a more nuanced view!
On the utilitarian argument, how did we win World War II without torturing Nazis and Japanese who we captured? We didn't -- find me an example, won't you? Again, I'm talking about torture as policy.
We have gained very little -- if anything -- from state sponsored torture -- and have lost a great deal. Not in the eyes of the world (countries which routinely torture their own citizens) but in our own eyes.
By the way, the line about McCain seeking the approval of the media and taking positions accordingly has been pretty much demolished of late by his support of the surge and the war. The media like him for the reasons that have been expressed by various bloggers on the bus with Mccain recently -- they like him because they like him. Not because he trashes conservatives or sucks up to them.
'We have gained very little -- if anything -- from state sponsored torture -- and have lost a great deal. Not in the eyes of the world (countries which routinely torture their own citizens) but in our own eyes"
Who lost...what did WE lose?
" Got to love the Lord for making things like that."
Morally Compromised
As a McCain supporter i have followed his statements on torture rather closely. He believes that torture should be illegal. I think most americans agree with him. Given that he was tortured and held captive for 5 and a half years by the NV he might have some insight that none of us have.
He has also said that in a doomsday scenario he will as President, do whatever is necessary which includes torture and be willing to face the consequences.
I will be seeing Adam on the bus on Sunday so maybe we can discuss it with McCain further.
I wish "girl" was going to be on the bus as well.
Brad Marston
Visit the best political blog that nobody reads at www.azamatterofact.com
Robert Novak is reporting that McCain may be formally conceding Iowa and putting all his eggs into New Hampshire (sorry, don't have a link).
“.....women and minorities hardest hit”