Legal Commentary

McCain -- What's Fair Criticism?

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

The Smirking Chimp, Puffing up John McCain, POW, has some rough stuff about McCain.

I think this part is not only fair criticism, but gets at the heart of one of the main reasons I can’t trust the guy and get steamed every time I hear about his ‘Straight Talk’:

McCain’s tragic flaw: He knows the right thing. He often sets out to do the right thing. But he doesn’t follow through. We saw McCain’s weak character in 2000, when the Bush campaign defeated him in the crucial South Carolina primary by smearing his family. Placing his presidential ambitions first, he swallowed his pride, set aside his honor, and campaigned for Bush against Al Gore. It came up again in 2005, when McCain used his POW experience as a POW to convince Congress to pass, and Bush to sign, a law outlawing torture of detainees at Guantanamo and other camps. But when Bush issued one of his infamous “signing statements” giving himself the right to continue torturing-in effect, negating McCain’s law-he remained silent, sucking up to Bush again.

Ditto McCain’s off-again on-again kowtows to the theocratic right wing. Or yesterday’s cowardly eleventh-hour failure to vote on the stimulus package even though McCain was in DC.

But the main thrust of the Smirking Chimp article is that McCain is to be blamed for cracking after days of very vigorous torture that he suffered as a POW and/or for not correcting people who say he didn’t. I don’t buy that.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on February 08, 2008 (boomark / email).