Using very tough language, George Will all but comes out against McCain

I happened to see Sen. McCain’s speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin about the finance crisis, and thought he sounded reasonably rational and presidential, though I was bothered that he didn’t discuss or explain his support for the bailout, which is the most important issue. George Will looks at the same McCain and sees an unhinged man:

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked The Wall Street Journal to editorialize that “McCain untethered”—disconnected from knowledge and principle—had made a “false and deeply unfair” attack on Cox that was “unpresidential” and demonstrated that McCain “doesn’t understand what’s happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does.”…

In any case, McCain’s smear—that Cox “betrayed the public’s trust”—is a harbinger of a McCain presidency. For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are “corrupt” or “betray the public’s trust,” two categories that seem to be exhaustive—there are no other people. McCain’s Manichean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law’s restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending. (For details, see The Washington Post of Sept. 17, Page A4; and The New York Times of Sept. 20, Page One.)…

The political left always aims to expand the permeation of economic life by politics. Today, the efficient means to that end is government control of capital. So, is not McCain’s party now conducting the most leftist administration in American history? The New Deal never acted so precipitously on such a scale. Treasury Secretary Paulson, asked about conservative complaints that his rescue program amounts to socialism, said, essentially: This is not socialism, this is necessary. That non sequitur might be politically necessary, but remember that government control of capital is government control of capitalism. Does McCain have qualms about this, or only quarrels?

On “60 Minutes” Sunday evening, McCain, saying “this may sound a little unusual,” said that he would like to replace Cox with Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic attorney general of New York who is the son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo. McCain explained that Cuomo has “respect” and “prestige” and could “lend some bipartisanship.” Conservatives have been warned.

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

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Just before I posted this entry, Paul Nachman wrote, under the subject line, “decisions, decisions”:

Dennis Prager makes me earnestly want Obama to lose.

George Will makes me heartfeltedly want McCain to lose.

LA replied:

For you still to be bent out of shape by the badness of both candidates indicates that you haven’t yet taken in the truth of this election, as posted on VFR’s main page:

“We’re screwed ‘08.”

Paul Nachman replies:

I laughed .. almost out loud!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 23, 2008 01:26 AM | Send