Bob Dylan once sang you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Honest Abe once observed you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, but not all of the people all of the time. One just has to laugh at John McCain's pronouncements about the greed on Wall Street and the need for reform. Now, while anyone can utter anything about what they will do in the future, there is no getting around what they have done.
How soon we forget. There was a major financial collapse in the Savings and Loan in the early 1990. One of the five senators cited for personal involvement in the collapse was none other than the “reformer and maverick” John McCain. A citation is in order:
McCain and Keating had become personal friends following their initial contacts in 1981,[10] and McCain was the closest socially to Keating of the five senators.[21] Like DeConcini, McCain considered Keating a constituent as he lived in Arizona.[18] Between 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.[22] In addition, McCain's wife Cindy McCain and her father Jim Hensley had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators. McCain, his family, and their baby-sitter had made nine trips at Keating's expense, sometimes aboard Keating's jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating's opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay. McCain did not pay Keating (in the amount of $13,433) for some of the trips until years after they were taken, when he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five
Yes, one can misrepresent what one will do, but what one did is a matter of record. Forget Palin in this matter. She has little experience and little knowledge of the world outside of her home state. McCain's claim of being a reformer borders on fraudulent at the least it is misleading. He is knee deep in the politics of the right. In a world of limited resources one needs to argue where one's loyalty lies. The fact is, and here's another cliché or truism, birds of a feather flock together.
In a time when a rational honest discussion of the issues is needed to make an informed decision, all we get from McCain is rhetoric that is outright misleading. Let's face it McCain's misrepresentations border on the ludicrous. His choice of Palin was engineered by neocons who haven't yet depleted the treasury. There is this misplaced belief in eminent domain. That somehow one is deserving of the presidency because of some history of service. This is bunk. And just the fact that McCain and Keating were buddies should disqualify him from a position of trust. It is not to discredit his claim as a reformer.
The world is not safer because of the misadventure in Iraq, the economy is no better because of deregulation, the food is not cleaner because of right wing food and drug administration, and the disaster response was no sharper because the president, this time, was on watch. McCain, if he is anything, is a product of a twisted belief in less government. Yes, in an ideal world and if people were pure, less government would be the order. But our problems are big, the issues complex. Misrepresentations and outright lies are what got us in the pickle we find ourselves. Pronouncements of indignation when the proverbial crap hits the fan are laugable.
It is ironic that John McCain constantly uses the refrain, “My Friends.” Is he talking to Mr. Keating or the hundred of thousands of small folk who were ripped off in the Savings and Loan Debacle that he had his big paws in engineering?
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