Ok. Confession, or perhaps disclaimer, time. I am an Independent from Vermont. I voted for John McCain in the Vermont 2000 primary. I may have voted for him in the 2000 election had not Bush and Rove’s lies smeared Senator McCain’s integrity and ended his chances.
I held the senator in high esteem. I spoke to him once in the fall of 2002 on Boston’s WBUR public radio about Ernest Hemingway’s code of honor– listen here and go to 20:02:
That code is about standing up for what you believe.
Later that night, I had Senator McCain sign his book “Worth the Fighting For” at a 2002 town hall meeting. I admired that night a man who spoke clearly to the issues that mattered to Americans.
But that was a different John McCain, the true maverick.
His fall came in the autumn of 2004, when John McCain faced perhaps the greatest test of his courage and bravery, of his resolve in his own convictions, since he was a POW.
That test was this:
Would John McCain, in the hopes of getting the money and backing of the GOP, swallow his integrity, valor, and pride and step up on a podium to stump for George W. Bush, the person responsible for the libelous and bilious smear done in the name of old-school politicking? Or would John McCain gather the courage to go it alone without Bush and company, to say no and to have faith in himself and what he believed and that others would follow. Would he have the steeliness to build a new politics around himself from the ground up and really change America in his own vision for the future. By example.
I thought, surely, the McCain I believed I knew would do the latter. A true maverick would buck GW and Rove and Cheney and the rest, and, trulyat the risk of winning or losing it all on his own in 2008, would say thanks, but no thanks…
This would have been the brave thing. The maverick thing.
Instead, the honorable John McCain caved and another John McCain stepped up there on that podium, transformed. A man without a code. For in getting up there, he was saying to independent-minded folks such as myself, “I give up. I give in. I am theirs now. I will follow, not lead.” Senator McCain became a POW to the GOP.
He not only made clear that he would bow to the GOP to get their monetary backing, but gave tacit approval of smear campaigns that ruined his first, best hope at the presidency. John McCain’s actions spoke loud and clear that lies and twisted truths, personal attacks and libel, an utter lack of any code save that of protect your own kind at any cost, are ok in the name of campaigning, and they are ok if those who smeared you will later give you money as long as you walk their walk and talk their talk.
John McCain has walked the same old GOP walk and talked their talk ever since.
John McCain demonstrated neither courage nor resolve, but cowardice and complicity in stumping for Bush. He acted as a man afraid that without the full support of a failed administration and their ultra right wing Christian conservative base, he might not win. Afraid that he could not stand on his convictions alone and bring in true Independents to replace the old guard of the ultra-right wing.
He was a man who let fear rule him in that moment. And in that moment, he became, to me, the worst of all things John McCain could be called, worse than anything Bush or Rove or any of them could have ever made up.
John McCain became just another politician.
A maverick, by definition, is: “one who holds independent views and who refuses to conform to the accepted or orthodox thinking on a subject.”
John Mccain has taken so many different, opposing, and contradictory views in the past year—on global warming, the economy and tax cuts, energy— I’ve lost track. He’s become a follower not a leader. He sees his opponent, Senator Obama making headway as the agent of change, so he decides, I’ll be the agent of change! He fishes around for soundbites hoping they will stick in the moment of a headline and perhaps bump him in the polls rather than speak truths that will ring resolutely and might instead last a lifetime. He speaks with a practiced hollow tone that sounds tinny in my ear now, a world of photo ops and soundbites instead of “Straight Talk.”
His choice of Governor Palin for Vice President too, is neither bold nor courageous, but a choice as scripted as any, one of desperation and appeasement to the utlra-conservative base he fears and fears losing. He now scolds the American press with the same tone of intolerance with which the last disgraceful administration scolded and ignored the institution as an annoying and unimportant part of our political system, rather than the important “fourth branch” that it is.
Governor Palin touts that she too is a maverick who stood up to big oil, yet she welcomes Alaska National Wildlife Refuge drilling. She claims she is against earmarks yet she asked for 100s of millions of dollars in earmarks herself. She assumes the feminist pedestal yet she places her own militaristic stance on abortion ahead of the mental and emotional regard of young women who may fall victim of rape and incest. She states her stance for equality for women yet she believes that women do not have equal pay simply because their education level is not the same.
She is no maverick. A maverick is much much more than a fist pumper and saber rattler. More than the spouter of red-meat. More than a mocker; more than the bellower of sarcasm; and she is one who is able to bare the glare of the press spotlight without complaint, faux outrage, and, yes, whining.
Palin’s and Mccain’s stances are not maverick, they are in lockstep with the GOP.
Drill here, drill now?
That’s maverick?
Trickle down Reaganomics?
That’s maverick?
$10 billion dollars a month in Iraq borrowed from the Chinese?
That’s maverick?
Osama Bin Laden free to roam Afghanistan, preparing to attack again?
That’s maverick?
Overturning Roe Vs. Wade?
That’s maverick?
Whatever one thinks about the Obama camp’s proposals, the McCain camp proposes not one single solution to today’s issues that are maverick, new, visionary, fresh, singular, or forward thinking.
They are old, tired and ask nothing of the American people.
Above all, a true maverick does not have to remind the public that he or she is maverick, nor resort to using the word maverick as a slogan in commercials, or as a label or a brand. She is a maverick by her actions and does not need to shout them aloud. And once she stoops to the slogan and the brand she loses such status. Because a maverick is also, by definition, “an unbranded animal.”
In 2004, John McCain was still that “unbranded animal” who spoke with an independent voice and who would not conform. But he broke his own code. He joined those with whom he did not share the same views in order to get their money and backing. In doing so, he was forced to compromise his own convictions for theirs. He could have chosen to lead by example, to really, truly take the biggest risk of his political life, and say no, I am breaking from those old ways and conventions. I am going it alone to lead by example.
John McCain is a maverick no more, no matter what his commercials say.
And that’s NOT baloney…
–Eric Rickstad
Posted by meridithl 
That's Baloney 