The John McCain 2008 for President Crap Shoot: Or If Your Personality Changes, You May Be Addicted

[McCamy Taylor]

Those who watched the Rachel Maddow Show tonight saw a different John McCain deliver a prepared monologue at the Al E. Smith Memorial Dinner. This guy was pleasant. He had a sense of humor. He could laugh at himself. He saw the world in shades of grey instead of black and white. Here is clip courtesy of You Tube and Fox News.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Goaj5V4tZoc

Now compare that McCain to the crotchety old man we saw last night on CBS:

http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/president/debates/third-presidential-debate.html

I recommend 1:13:39 the portion of the program in which McCain mocks the health of pregnant women by putting the word “health” in air quotes as he says

You know that’s been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything. That’s the extreme pro-abortion position, quote, “health”.

Which begs the question, what do you stand for Sen. Grumpy McNasty? Death?

If you go back and watch the exchange between Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain closely, you will see what happened. Moderator and McCain fan Bob Schieffer lobbed another softball at his candidate, so that McCain could accuse his opponent of being a baby killer. Obama turned the tables on them both by refuting McCain's charge and then seizing upon such conservative issues as abstinence and adoption as ways to prevent abortion. Schieffer did what he always did whenever Obama tried to find common ground---he interrupted Obama and gave the floor to McCain, who was beginning to make enraged bull snorting noises. Angry at losing another round, McCain lashed out at the first available target---in this case women who needed abortions because of medical problems---without thinking through his words.

The normal John McCain may be a charming, humane, tolerant person, but addiction changes a man, and I believe that McCain is running his presidential campaign like one long crap shoot. Every time he does not win a roll of the dice, he loses his temper---and then he jumps back into “the game” often with a renewed desire to make up for his previous losses with a large bet placed at long odds.

We should all thank the New York Times for telling us that John McCain has a long history of casino gambling binges. And then we should spank the press for concealing this information. There is no way that the reporters following the Straight Talk Express could have failed to have noticed detours to Atlantic City. The Washington Post considered it front page news when Democratic candidate John Edwards got an overpriced haircut, but no one in the entire press corp thought that anyone would care that the Republican nominee was spending one weekend out of four living it up in Vegas? Chris Matthews and George Will were both right when each of them said, independently, that the press was John McCain’s base.

Watching John McCain’s performance in these last three debates, it has been difficult for me to understand why so many members of the press, like Tom Brokaw and Bob Schieffer suck up to him. He has gone out of his way to be a dick. His campaign is slimy. His choices are stupid---like Palin. He lies brazenly and surrounds himself with lobbyists and takes money from foreigners which is illegal. He has damaged his own brand name as a maverick by embracing the far right in the primary. Almost everyday, some politician or reporter says “That’s not the John McCain I know!” or “If only he would be himself!” or “Someone else must be running his campaign.”

Tonight, when he was not campaigning, he seemed like a nice enough guy, and my first thought was How come no one ever told him to campaign as this guy instead of as the asshole that no one likes? And then I remembered all those politicians and reporters who have been exclaiming That isn’t the real John McCain! . And the proverbial light bulb went off inside my head and I realized that John McCain can’t campaign as himself. Because he treats campaigning like one great big gambling binge, and gamblers have no control over themselves.

Here is a list of the warning signs of gambling addiction. Replace gambling with campaigning for president.

http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/20questions.html

1.Did you ever lose time from work or school due to campaigning ?

I will give you one guess who has missed more Senate votes this session than anyone else, and no it isn’t poor Tim Johnson who had the brain hemorrhage. McCain has missed 64%. Obama has missed 46%. McCain loves campaigning much more than he loves his day job.

2.Has gambling ever made your home life unhappy?

It did when his wife got addicted to pain pills after McCain blamed her for his own indiscretion in the Keating 5 case (she had lost a receipt). That was one of his earliest campaigning misadventures, in which he accepted money and gifts to advance his career in exchange for doing favors. You can look at the entire political career of John McCain as one long gambling binge leading up to this presidential run.

3.Did campaigning affect your reputation?

Has it! This year his behavior on the campaign trail has made people call him “erratic” , “a liar” and worse. He has tarnished his maverick image which he took such pains to create. The Keating 5 Scandal from years ago probably set back his career a decade, forcing him to craft his image as a reformer, even as he continued to accept money from lobbyists in exchange for doing favors, a practice which is part of his reckless campaigning style.

4. Have you ever felt remorse after campaigning ?

In 2000, during the South Carolina campaign, John McCain decided to equivocate on the Confederate Flag. Here is what he said later:

McCAIN: The worst advice that I've given to myself was when the Confederate flag was flying over the state Capitol in South Carolina and I decided that I would say that's not an issue that I should be involved in, that it's -- should be decided by the people of the state of South Carolina. I knew that it was a symbol that was very offensive to many people, and afterwards I went back and apologized. But it was, needless to say, by saying that I wouldn't have anything to do with an issue like that was an act of cowardice.

And we all know that the Keating 5 was his worst moment. He has said so. Worse even than Vietnam. And yet, his experience with the Keating 5 did not keep him from doing the same things for Paxson, Echostar and others. Links are available in my journal here:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/311

From the Washington Post re: Paxson

The Paxson deal, coming as McCain made his first run for the presidency, has posed a persistent problem for the senator. The deal raised embarrassing questions about his dealings with lobbyists at a time when he had assumed the role of an ethics champion and opponent of the influence of lobbyists.

The two letters he wrote to the FCC in 1999 while he was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee produced a rash of criticism and a written rebuke from the then-FCC chairman, who called McCain's intervention "highly unusual." McCain had repeatedly used Paxson's corporate jet for his campaign and accepted campaign contributions from the broadcaster and his law firm.

Now, ordinarily, if you get burned by something like Keating 5, you stay away from fire. You don’t go playing around with something like Paxson where you are going to get burned again. Unless you are compelled to seek out fire by some compulsion that takes control of your reason and judgment, like an addiction.

7. After losing did you feel you must return as soon as possible and win back your losses?

The “erratic” behavior of the McCain campaign is exactly like a gambler placing a series of long shot bets, hoping that just one of them will pay off big. Each time a new attack causes him to fall in the polls, he responds with another crazy bet. I sometimes think that this latest strategy, the Let Palin whip them into a frenzy of hate is the longest shot of all----if you know what I mean. For a gambler like McCain losing is not intolerable. Approaching election day and not having a single lottery ticket in his hand---that would be intolerable. There has to be at least a chance that he can win, otherwise he can not experience the rush of anticipation.

16. Have you ever committed, or considered committing, an illegal act to finance campaigning ?

McCain attended an illegal fund raiser in Great Britain this year when he could not raise cash at home.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/03/14/mccain_invites_fundraisers_to.html

He also takes money from a wide variety of lobbyists and corporations in exchange for doing favors, which is immoral and possibly illegal. I document this reformer’s love affair with donors in the DU journal linked above


17. Did campaigning cause you to have difficulty in sleeping?

Good question. Recall from his medical records that John McCain takes a sleeping pill. This was an issue, because it raised the question, who was going to answer those 3 am calls when he was sedated for the night? Hillary?

According to the folks at Gamblers Anonymous, answering 7 of these questions in the affirmative makes you compulsive.

So, my diagnosis of what ails the John McCain 2008 Campaign is....John McCain. I think he is in charge and he can not help himself, and when this is all over he will look back and wonder what the hell possessed him. Let's hope he does not look back from the White House. We have just finished eight years with one president with an addictive personality. We do not need another.

[Berry Cool]

1. What was so "charming, humane and tolerant"

about his joke implying that Keith Olbermann will need a padded room if Grampy manages to pull out the election? That KO has already created a "Mission Accomplished" banner for Election Day and that Grampy will be happy to tell him where to put it?

[catrose]

2. Thanks

for shining the light on addiction. No, we don't need it again.

And what does it say about people who <i>admire</i> addictive qualities?

[bertman]

3. Thanks for a very enlightening assessment of some of McCain's personality problems.

I, like most Americans, had no idea that he is a gambling addict, so this explains a lot.

During the debate I felt that Schieffer was fair and impartial. Maybe I'll go back and view it again to see if I notice the "softballs". Generally I am a rabidly aggressive parser of the moderator's questions, comments, and even his/her facial expressions so I thought I was rapt paying attention to the allegedly pro-McCain moderator, Bob Schieffer. I guess I was being naive and inattentive. Oddly enough, my wife also commented on how even-handed she felt Schieffer was throughout the debate.

You are absolutely right about the "real" John McCain that we saw last night at the dinner. It made me feel so good to see him say good things about Barack Obama, then warmly greet him and actually smile directly at him in what appeared to me to be a genuine manner--totally contrary to the other debate greetings when McCain looked like he was gritting his gnarly little yellow possum teeth the whole time.

BerryBush, it was a comedy sketch and it was hilarious. Lighten up. Both guys were funny as hell. Can't we turn off our usual unwaivering PC-checkers for a few minutes while the candidates throw funnies at each other? If not, I guess the religious right will be giving Obama HOLY HELL for saying he wasn't born in a manger (Did I see the Cardinal wince at that one), which I thought was funny as all gitout.

Now that the three-hour truce is over, it's back to our regularly-scheduled programming of opposition bashing and suspicion. Got to love this politics!

[nichomachus]

4. This is classic McCain

This has been him for a long time.

When he's in a controlled situation and not under any pressure, he's quite charming -- always has been. I watched him on The Daily Show a few times during the primaries and remarked at the time that if I knew nothing else about him, I could be persuaded to vote for him based on that -- not that I would do such a thing.

Actually, the same for Mike Huckabee -- very funny, charming, self-deprecating in the right circumstances. With Mike, you need to look at his core beliefs to realize he's wacked.

McCain, however, can't handle pressure -- and whether it's PTSD or gambling addiction, who knows. The point is that he's no good under pressure. He has a short fuse and goes from zero to prick in about four seconds. He also can't keep track of what he says under pressure and just starts blurting out stupid things. And, he has no poker face. When the other person is scoring points against him, he reacts like a bubbling volcano.

He is a dangerous person to be in charge of anything important.

[LiberalLovinLug]

5. John, you gotta know when to fold 'em

"...zero to prick in about four seconds."

LOL good one.

I also have to say that Bob Schieffer surprised me in that IMO he was by far the BEST moderator of the bunch. I wasn't expecting it based on his couching interview questions in the past with liberal guests. I was particularly disgusted with his "really?" reaction to Wesley Clark's obvious assertion that just because you have been a POW doesn't mean you are qualified to be POTUS. But I liked the way he came out right away and threw down the name calling challenge on both of them. (The reason I liked it is that it compared to Obama's relatively benign campaign digs like "erratic", to McCain's words like "terrorist" pal and "dangerous" it forced McCain on the defensive from the get go) And he seemed to allow both candidates all the time they needed to counter charges from the other.

[McCamy Taylor]

6. Bob Schieffer proved he was rooting for McCain when he asked the

question "Both camps are equally guilty of negative campaigning aren't you ashamed of yourselves. McCain go first." A couple of days before the debate, I wrote a journal about Schieffer's long history of Bush/McCain bias and predicted that if he was trying to throw softballs at McCain he would ask this question rather than asking "What about this Bill Ayers story that the McCain campaign keeps talking about?"

The Bill Ayers story was the real news. The way that Palin has getting audiences to shout "traitor" and "kill him" about the Dem nominee---something that is not done in US politics.

Schieffer twisted it all around. He gave McCain a chance to play the victim. It was set up so that McCain could shed some crocodile tears over Rep. John Lewis, cry "reverse discrimination", pretend that he had only gotten dirty because his opponent was dirty.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/315

Is Schieffer paid to report the news the way he would like it to be? Apparently. If Schieffer is true to form, tomorrow night we can expect him to comment upon the way that both campaigns have turned negative, giving John McCain a platform from which to play outraged innocence (“Why you young whippersnapper, I spent the Vietnam War in a box to preserve your right to go to any school you wanted to and this is how you repay me!”).

Schieffer is not a moron. He knew how to be biased in a subtle way, but if you watched closely he had several questions designed specifically for McCain to launch into his talking points. Abortion---Obama is a baby killer. How to cut the deficit--pork barrel spending. Economy--only one question, because McCain does not like it. Education---McCain promised vouchers. VPs---trap in which Obama was supposed to criticize Palin (Obama was too smart and he avoided it). Schieffer also interrupted Obama when he got onto the topics of bipartisanship/working together/issues not character since these are what independents want in their president. I.e. whenever Obama started to look too good.

I think I may need to get the NYT transcript and video and do a close analysis. Schieffer pulled the wool over a lot of eyes of casual viewers. I suspect he and the McCain camp coordinated the questions. Of course, I think most members of the press are evolved from slime mold.

[LiberalLovinLug]

7. I have no doubts about the color of Schieffer's glasses

I still think that he managed, either wittingly or not, to conduct his debate with the most ,shall we say, flow. I was disgusted with Brokaw's need for attention, even if the only position available was the third wheel. I just thought that Schieffer managed to stay, for the most part, in the background and allowed the candidates to finish their thoughts.

Sure he gave McCain the first stab but going last has its advantages as well. And who really has heard of Rep. John Lewis's statement? (which actually has merit). At least by having the moderator as the one to bring up the Ayers topic Obama was delegated time to officially respond to the ludicrousness of the charge. It could have instead been slid in on the sly by McCain at various points to egg on Obama with no official time set aside to deal with the old fart's lies thus his responses would have been left open to be pressured and curtailed.

Whatever if it was a conspiracy, it backfired.

[bertman]

8. Yep, "zero to prick in about four seconds" is perfect. Got to remember that one. LOL