The Bad, Worse & Downright Ugly: The Week McCain Would Like to Forget

July 10, 2008

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To say that John McCain had a “rough week” would be an understatement. In all reality, the past five days under any other circumstances, with any other candidate, would represent the beginning of the end politically speaking. Yet somehow McCain continues to breeze on by with little more then a whimper from the mainstream media, a rather troubling trend that has become the “norm” in the “talking heads” coverage of the 2008 election.

How bad was McCain’s week? Really bad, and that’s putting it politely - very politely. For example, if Barack Obama had committed any two of the laundry list of unforced blunders, gaffes and idiotic actions McCain has the media would be in all out attack mode - letting us hear about it on repeat for the next three weeks. But not McCain. He’s the “media darling”, and anything he says or does that comes across as completely asinine is nothing more then a “mistake”.

You may be asking yourself what took place over this now infamous “week from hell”? Don’t fret, I will provide you with a quick rundown of the disastrous time line we watched unfold day after day courtesy of Team McCain:

1. McCain unambiguously called Social Security “an absolute disgrace.”

This is not a quote taken out of context. John McCain called one of the most successful and popular government programs, which uses the tax revenues of current workers to support retirement benefits for the elderly “an absolute disgrace.” This is shocking - and if uttered from Obama’s mouth would dominate the news coverage and the Sunday shows, as pundits would speculate about the massive damage the statement would cause him among retirees in Florida.

2. McCain’s top economic policy adviser calls Americans a bunch of “whiners” for being worried about the slumping economy.

Words cannot fully explain how devastating this statement should be from Phil Gramm. You would think it would be enough to sink McCain’s campaign. Of course McCain only thinks that the economic problems are psychological.

3. Iraqi leaders call for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal, McCain gets caught in a bizarre denial and flip flop.

The Iraqis now want us to begin planning our withdrawal - McCain however wants to stay foooorrreeevvveerrrr. So what does McCain say - First, he refuses to accept Maliki’s statement as being true. Then he concedes that it was an accurate statement, but was probably just a political ploy to curry favor with his own people and WOULD NOT influence his determination to keep US troops in Iraq indefinitely. Yet, McCain in 2004 at the Council on Foreign Relations said that if the Iraqis asked us to leave, we would have to go. No matter what. But that was apparently a younger and less experienced John McCain.

4. McCain’s economic plan to cut the deficit has no details and is simply not believable.

There are so many things here. McCain pledges he would eliminate the deficit by the end of his first term (the campaign latter flip flop flipped about whether it was four years or eight years), but does not provide any details about how he would do it. Economists on both sides of the political aisle said that this was simply not believable, especially given McCain’s other proposals to a) cut individual and corporate taxes even further, b) extend the Bush tax cuts and c) massively increase defense spending on manpower (200,000 more troops) and d) maintain a long-term sizable military presence in Iraq.

5. McCain’s deficit plan includes bringing the troops home represents a major Iraq flip-flop.

Speaking of the long-term military presence - a story that has gotten absolutely no attention is that McCain now believes the war will be over soon. The economic forecasts made by his crack team of economists predict that there will be significant savings during McCain’s first term because we will have achieved “victory” in Iraq and Afghanistan. The savings from victory (ie the savings from not having our troops there) will then be used to pay down the deficit. The only way this could have any impact on the deficit in McCain’s first time is if troop withdrawals start very soon. So McCain believes victory is in our grasps and we can begin withdraw troops from Iraq pretty much right away — doesn’t sound that different from Obama’s plan does it. Someone should at least ask McCain HOW HE DEFINES VICTORY - and why he thinks we will achieve it in the next couple of years.

6. McCain campaign misled about economists support.

In the major press release the McCain campaign issued to tout its Jobs for America economic plan that would balance the budget in 4 years, it included the signatures of more than 300 economists who the campaign claimed to support the plan. Only problem is that the economists were actually asked to sign up to SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. Um, hello?

7. McCain makes a joke about killing Iranians.

Haha… that’s just McCain being McCain. I am sure that is exactly how it is being reported in Tehran. This guy is running for President not to become a talk radio pundit. Yet according to the AP this was just a humanizing moment between candidate and spouse - I am not sure when joking about the deaths of civilians became humanizing.

8. McCain denies, flatly, that he ever said that he is not an expert in economics.

Are you kidding?

This isn’t even all of McCain’s “wonder week” shenanigans, in fact Max Bergmann (whom is responsible for the explanation of the events above) has a complete rundown of what went sour for Team McCain this week, and can be found in it’s entirety here.

So with the foundation of McCain’s nightmare of a week laid out for you to take in for all its worth, lets now look at what stories dominated the news cycles over the past five days. First of course there was the whole “Is Obama shifting his position on Iraq” headline story, which in all reality was as contrived as a news story can be. With the manufactured “controversy” still alive and well thanks to media overkill, we had Jesse Jackson’s on air comments regarding Barack Obama, that was then in turn treated as the “end all, be all” of news stories. Mind you, when all of this was taking place, McCain was systematically bumbling, fumbling, and screwing up more and more as each day passed - all of which was for the part ignored in lieu of the Obama headlines mentioned above.

If anything this serves as an eye opening, “please don’t try denying it”, glimpse at just how one sided the campaign coverage has been. Again I want you to ask yourself what would have happened if Obama had called social security a “disgrace”, or if an Obama surrogate called American’s “whiners” over their economic dismay, and that the problem with our economy was simply “mental”. It would be the end of the world, and the coverage would not let us forget it either.

It’s gotten to the point where there’s nothing else to do but laugh at the one sidedness we are being inundated with. If you do anything other then take it with a grain of salt, you will seriously end up ripping your hair out - and that’s never a good thing ya know.