Johann Hari: We have everything to fear from McCain
Thursday, 17 July 2008
When the almost six billion of us outside the US watch the contest for The Most Powerful Man in the World, we tend to focus on the candidates' foreign policies. If I was Iranian, say, I'd be anxious that John McCain keeps joking in public about killing me. As a bravo-bow after singing "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys melody Barbra Ann, he responded to being told exports of cigarettes to Iran are high by guffawing: "That's a way of killing them!"
But there's a way in which the next US president will affect you even more directly than foreign policy. By his economic decisions, the next president will help swing the price of the food you eat and the wages you earn – wherever you live on earth.
So it's a little worrying that John McCain – who still has a reasonable chance of winning – says: "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should... To be honest, I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated."
This is a man who can't tell his Sunni from his Shia, and who opposed the Northern Ireland peace process as a capitulation to terrorism. And he admits he knows even less about the economy than that. On one occasion, he let his irritation with the subject slip by referring to it as "the credit cunt".
When he is forced to talk about the economy, McCain has always given the same answer: "I rely on the circle I have developed over many years – people like Phil Gramm." He has Herbert Hoovered-up his slivers of economic theory from this man – but who is Gramm? Until he briefly sputtered into the headlines a few days ago, nobody had cared to look.
more...
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-we-have-everything-to-fear-from-mccain-869681.html
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