McCain Leaves a Sour Taste

If you're Canadian, you might think that this is a comment about the Maple Leaf Foods Listeria outbreak. But this has nothing to do with Maple Leaf's CEO, Michael McCain.


No, this is about the OTHER McCain, the one running for president of the United States, our little neighbour to the south.

I watched John McCain's convention speech on BBC World this week, a strangely psychedelic experience given the undulating skin and floating hair that had nothing to do with any chemicals in my body but was a side-effect of the low-bandwidth video encoding that my TV provider uses to squeeze more non-mainstream channels down the pipe to my house. To see John's cheeks stay in one place while his head moves is quite the experience.

But, like many, real, drug-induced experiences, this one altered my perception of reality, damaged my sense of well being and gave me nightmares.

And it wasn't John's Bush-esque oratory skills (or auditory as one of CNN's (couldn't take the melting-faces effect on BBC any longer) 'pundits' referred to them right after the speech - I didn't realise he was deaf as well) that gave me my bad trip.

No, my reaction was to the content of the speech, a speech so ultra-conservative, it could have been written by Margaret Thatcher's and Ronald Reagan's lovechild.

I can just imagine the speech-writers' pre-conference meetings:

"Okay we need to focus on John's strengths."

"Yeah, strengths. We'll he's not actually that strong but he's old. That's a kind of strength."

"Experienced, not old. And I don't really think we want to be highlighting his age. What about the thing's he's done?"

"Well he was at Vietnam; you know, the whole capture, torture, thing."

"Right. Vietnam. What else."

"He voted for more troops in Iraq."

"Okay, another war thing. What else?"

"His wife is young. Looking."

"He's Republican!"

"He's experienced!"

"Okay, War it is then. What could we use from that."

"Death?"

"No."

"Profiteering."

"That's not an election winner..."

"Well, I suppose you fight in a war."

"You're right! Fighting! That could be his thing! He's a fighter. He'll fight for this and for that and everyone will love him!"

"Yeah, we'll just put lots of fighting talk in between all the references to freedom and God and the delegates will love it."

"You bet. And, if they don't, we'll just direct attention away from him by talking about that Canadian guy who's company gave everyone Listeria. What's his name again?"

And so it was. In John McCain's speech, he says the word fight 25 times. That's a pretty strong theme and it certainly seems to have picked some popular opinion right out of Barack Hussein Obama's pockets. After all, like all absolutes, it's easy; he'll fight for all that's good, he'll fight for freedom, yada, yada.

But what does it actually mean?

Well, some of the specifics in his speech lay out Mr. McCain's particular style of fighting:

He said that Americans are "dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal and endowed by our creator with inalienable rights" and that "no country ever had a greater cause than that." In other words, fight everyone not because it's right, but because you are right. In the big junior hockey league that is the world stage, God is the Republican coach, shouting from the sidelines for his team to beat on all the other guys.

He warned the "me first, country second crowd" in government that "change is coming". But what kind of change? More me-first? After all, isn't 'me first, country second' a particularly succinct definition of Conservatism.

He believes in a culture of life, whatever that means.

He believes in "personal responsibility" and unleashing the "creativity and initiative of Americans". I don't know about you, but I get nervous whenever anyone talks about unleashing anything. Fancy words are like fancy shoes; they cover up the hard skin which, in this case, is 'you're on you own - don't expect any sort of social conscience from THIS administration.' And, just to make sure everyone understood, he said he would open new markets to goods and services AND he would stop giving millions of dollars to countries who "don't like us very much" so I suppose that will give the States the biggest trade surplus in history! But, McCain's government will reduce government spending because, apparently, government spending is a really, really bad thing! I don't confess to being a political expert but I always thought that it was good for government to spend money on things like infrastructure, education, health, social welfare, you know, the little things.

Look back to the Social Darwinism theories that pervaded the American elite at the end of the nineteenth century and be afraid.

Next, John will cut taxes! Okay, fair enough, he is a Republican.

He'll make it easier to find and keep good health care insurance. How? A toll-free number? A new website design. Easier access to loans to pay the premiums? But, rest assured, he won't put that most evil of creatures, a bureaucrat, between you and your doctor. So it's still better to let people pay for healthcare (or have none) rather than get it for free. I mean look at places like the UK or Cuba or New Zealand or Ireland or Iceland or Denmark or Sweden or France. People are just dying in the streets because of those damn bereaucrats. We should round them all up and send them to somewhere really terrible, like Canada maybe?

For employment, Mr McCain says, "for workers in industries that have been hard-hit, we'll help make up part of the difference in wages between their old job and a temporary, lower paid one." He is obviously referring to education where teachers who are "bad" will be "helped" to find another line of work.

Wow.

If only we could do that with politicians.

What about energy? John will attack it! Yes, attack! Nuclear Attack !! Nuclear is the way to go. Oh, and coal. Not that nasty old black stuff but good clean coal. Yeah, and there might be some of that other stuff, what's it called? The wind and the sun, that's it.

John McCain called his party, the part of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan and, as a tribute to the latter president, he is also promising us something that Ronald would be proud of, a return to the cold war. He laid charges that Russia "invaded a small, democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world's oil supply."

Ehm, wait a minute. Replace 'small, democratic neighbour' with 'country' in that last statement and doesn't that sound a bit familiar?

John McCain is a brave man, there's no denying it but, sadly for me, he is also a Republican. He hates war but he knows it, it's his 'thing'. He's bringing the army barracks to small-town America. He wants a society where people do the best they can for themselves and fight for the prosperity of the country they call home but, unlike the army, helping your fellow soldier doesn't count. Taking care of the less fortunate, the hurt and the poor, doesn't count. Giving everyone a chance, regardless of ability, doesn't count.

In John McCain's army, I fear, lots of people will get left behind.