Mike Cucher: John McCain's Weapons of Self-Destruction

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Mike Cucher

With the election less than a week away, the McCain campaign should be praying that its base doesn't look too closely at the candidate's memoir, "Worth The Fighting For" (co-authored by political aide Mark Salter). For if his maverick, straight-talkin' persona is what really mobilizes the Arizona senator's core supporters, they might not be too happy to read that many of his decisions, even a few of his outbursts, had more to do with political expediency and career-driven ambition than with putting country first. In the final chapter of his memoir, he writes, "For the politician who promises to put patriotism before selfishness, who promises not to lie, and then reneges, does more harm to the public trust than does the politician who makes no issue of his or her virtue or the pretenses of politics that voters take for granted." What type of politician, then, is John McCain and how might he honor the public trust as president of the United States?

In the pages of Worth The Fighting For, McCain freely admits to putting career advancement before public service on a number of occasions, starting with using his freshman term in the House to launch his Senate campaign. But the Straight Talk Express really seems to have skidded off the rails during the 2000 Republican primaries. In an effort to counter possible fallout from an interview in which he described the Confederate flag as "a symbol of racism and slavery" -- a statement almost guaranteed to end his hopes of winning the crucial primary in South Carolina -- his staff prepared a written statement for him to read the following day. He describes, in an extraordinarily revealing passage, his decision to read the concession to pro-flag, South Carolina republicans: "since I had seemed to tilt more to the NAACP's position, I would now have to identify a bit more personally with the pro-flag side. I didn't want to do this. But I could tell from the desperate looks of my staff that we had an enormous problem. And that it could come down to lying or losing. I chose lying."

To his credit, McCain eventually came clean about his position on the issue both in South Carolina and in the pages of Worth The Fighting For, taking what I consider to be a principled stand against the state-sponsored celebration of a heritage that, for many, represents the historical nightmare of terror and slavery. But what I hope voters truly consider before going to the polls on November 4 is that we didn't get the truth from McCain until after his 2000 candidacy had become a lost cause. What does it say about his attitude toward the public trust that he promised "you will always hear the truth from me... no matter what" after he had already lied straight to our faces in an attempt to further his political career in South Carolina? Will we have to wait until his next book is published to know what lies of convenience he's told during the current campaign? Do we want him to be in the White House when we find out?

On the other hand, if we're looking for clues into what a McCain presidency might look like, we might begin by taking a closer look at some of the formative influences on his character and personality. According to Worth The Fighting For, these influences include fictional characters such as Robert Jordan from Hemingway's Spanish Civil War novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and quasi-historical figures such as Emiliano Zapata as he is portrayed in Elia Kazan's film, "Viva Zapata!" (1952). Both protagonists wage heroic, popular rebellions until they are finally crushed under the weight of insurmountable odds. Charles Keating, who almost single-handedly cost U.S. taxpayers $3.4 billion during the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s, figures into this narrative, as well. Even though his association with the financier almost ended his political career, McCain characterizes Keating as "a self-starter, a man of great confidence and daring who saw life as a huge adventure." He continues, "People like that appeal to me. Attracted to their boldness and vivacity, and to the achievements of their enterprise, I have sometimes forgotten that wisdom and a strong sense of public responsibility are much more admirable qualities." There is a pattern throughout McCain's memoir in which individualism, ambition, and a burning devotion to a seemingly hopeless cause represent "a glorious futility" for which the Arizona senator cannot quite shake his almost primal attraction -- an attraction that can seem noble when it manifests itself in his appetite for unpopular legislation and a bit self-destructive when he exposes his own egregious lies in print. But when the common cause he seeks with losing battles reveals itself in, as he puts it, his "natural ability to agitate an otherwise tranquil situation into something of a commotion," it can become belligerent.

In the context of a maverick presidential campaign, these qualities make him a fearless, unpredictable, and effective underdog. But on Election Day, the United States will have to decide if it is willing to commit its future to a collision course with the "beautiful fatalism" McCain so admires in Hemingway's doomed Spanish republicans, whose salvation lay in sacrificing their lives for "something greater." A healthy sense of fatalism certainly seems to have steeled McCain's resolve during his career as a Navy flier, especially during his years of captivity in Hoa Lo prison. But "something greater" means something different for civil society than it means either on the battlefield, or during a presidential election. It means implementing and nurturing the grand ideas that often appear as black and white as they are vague when they're being used as slogans to mobilize combat troops and voters. Based on the self-portrait he offers us in Worth The Fighting For, the senator seems more inclined and, indeed, better prepared to lay down his life for a worthy cause than to find a way to advance that same cause as the national executive. For if we offer our highest office to this former flyboy who has spent his life trying to live up to the standards of a pantheon of principled, yet reckless and self-destructive warrior-heroes, we invite the very real possibility that he will take us all down with him.

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

Mike Cucher is an assistant lecturer and graduate student at the University of Southern California.