Dear Mr. Krauthammer:

McCain for President

Correction:  Obama for President

By Charles Krauthammer

By Hot Free Press

Friday, October 24, 2008

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Contrarian that I am, I’m voting for John McCain. I’m not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it’s over before it’s over. I’m talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they’re left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

Are they wet-fingered conservatives or supple-minded conservatives?  John McCain went from ‘bad potential president’ to ‘maniac who put Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency’.  That’s a reckless swerve toward unelectability.  We’ve had a lot of bad presidents, with George W. Bush topping the list, but–and I hate to admit this–Dubya is nowhere near as offensive and deficient as Sarah Palin.  Maybe, but doubtfully, some conservatives have finally learned that electing a vacuous right-winger and political sciolist who lives in a supernatural fantasy land isn’t funny.

The Republicans have consistently played to the lowest common denominator of the American electorate.  This time, even the American people, who are capable of stooping to astonishing lows, said…uhhhh…NO!

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe — neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) — yelling “Stop!” I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I’d rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

You’re athwart, all right.  When the ship’s going down, all the rats jump.  That’s how they survive.  What kind of rat would go down with a sinking ship, a sinking, burning ship loaded with 30 years of putrid, toxic Republican waste?

I welcome Christopher Buckley.  I have a dinghy for him.  Powell, Adelman, and most of all Christopher Hitchens, are more than welcome to join you at the bottom of the sea.  May there be sufficient oxygen in the wheelhouse for Hitchens to regale you with innumerable parables of his own eminence and greatness of mind.  In any case, Hichens isn’t a conservative; therefore, he can’t be a conservative ship-jumper.  He’s a ship-jumper, no doubt.  He jumps from ship to ship trying to piss people off.

Hitchens is a gassy polemicist.

You sir, are a conservative apologist.

First, I’ll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The “erratic” temperament issue, for example. As if McCain’s risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.

Barack Hussein Obama is no liberal, my friend, no liberal at all.  Wild-eyed conservatives are, seemingly, acceptable to the voting public, but show any measure of left-lean, and the machine will grind you beneath its wheels.

While the American public is basically liberal, they identify themselves as conservatives.  I guess it sounds better to them, and it’s what their preachers want them to say.  But, look at surveys of what Americans want from government, and it’s socialist stuff.  Yeah, I said socialist!  Holy Schnikies!

Ask Americans about social issues, and you’ll find they’re rather accepting of homosexuality, gay marriage, abortion, and legalization of marijuana.

Erratic and irrational don’t have the same meaning.  I know that you know that, and shame on you for switching mid-stream from one to the other as though they are related.  ‘Erratic’ means that he makes sudden, unpredictable changes.  No question, John McCain is as erratic as any politician of our time.

‘Irrational’, on the other hand, means ‘not consistent with or using reason.’  I agree.  McCain’s wacky scheme to skip out on his campaign and, perhaps, a debate, wasn’t irrational.  It was a well-reasoned, cynical attempt to get votes.  It was also erratic.

Senator McCain was also erratic as a student, pilot, and husband.  The Obama campaign might be using ‘erratic’ to imply that McCain is old.  I use ‘erratic’ as an apt descriptor for the old Senator.

McCain the “erratic” is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.

Stalwart is not an antonym for erratic.  If McCain is stalwart, he may be strong and vigorous, though that’s doubtful at this point.  Or maybe you mean the ‘Stalwart’ faction of the Republican Party?  McCain may have served in the Senate with Stalwart Roscoe Conkling in the late 19th century.

Nor will I countenance the “dirty campaign” pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed that McCain supports “cutting Social Security benefits in half.” And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

The Obama ad to which you may be referring featured Rush Limbaugh quotes.  There’s nothing wrong with quoting the flabby douchebag face of the Republican Party.  He gives the Republican Party 15 hours of undying allegiance on the radio every week.  That kind of unquestioning fealty to his beloved Republicans makes him a valid target.  Limbaugh’s show is nothing but an hours long verbal pleasuring of the nation’s wingnuts.

It’s a bit too kind to say that Senator McCain supports ‘cutting Social Security benefits in half.’  What he really supports is the Republican scam of privatizing Social Security and turning retirement into a crap shoot for all but the wealthiest Americans.

When a questioner asked McCain about Bush’s crazy idea of American troops being in Iraq for 50 years, McCain said, “Maybe a hundred. Make it one hundred.”  There you go, Charles.  Iraq is not Japan, Germany, or South Korea.

Iraq is a volatile region driven by ethnic and religious hatred.  Japan, Germany, and South Korea are basically homogeneous.  Once the war or police action was over, their leadership acquiesced, and the war ended.  As long as there are Americans in Iraq, it is a war.  It will be 100 years of attacks and bombings, and it will remain the terrorist breeding ground it never was until the US invasion and occupation.

McCain’s critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What’s astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

This is silly.  William Ayers is an acquaintance of Obama’s.  William Ayers is a distinguished professor.  William Ayers used to be a radical.

Ask John McCain about his friendship with the radical felon G. Gordon Liddy. Please, would somebody other than David Letterman ask McCain about Liddy?  Unlike Ayers, who is now a distinguished professor, G. Gordon Liddy is a certifiable right-wing nutcase.  He’s also a felon.  He also owns guns.  Isn’t that illegal?

Yes, it is.

John McCain pals around with G. Gordon Liddy who planned to firebomb a think tank and assassinate a journalist.  He also planned kidnappings and break-ins.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama’s most egregious association — with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

Yeah, John McCain really, really wants to bring up Jeremiah Wright!  That would be a great plan when his supporters include John Hagee and Rod Parsley, and his running mate is a batshit crazy pentecostal who’s just biding her time, hanging with a witch hunter until the rapture.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Jesus Chuck, maybe your life revolves around countless hours of shivering in your panic room, trying to find clever ways to rephrase your undying love of all things backward and regressive, but some of us don’t carry that kind of fear with us.

If there’s going to be a surprise, I know I don’t want to surprise a curmudgeonly old coot.  He might hit his handmaiden with his walking stick.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who’s been cramming on these issues for the past year, who’s never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of “a world that stands as one”), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as “the tragedy of 9/11,” a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Yes.  That’s the one I want to answer the phone at 3 a.m.  You know why?  Because I know he would answer thoughtfully and deliberately.  I know he would think through the situation rather than, say, abandon his campaign, skip the Letterman show, and fly off to try to get some spotlight.

Why are you conservatives so afraid of multilateralism and the world standing as one?  Do you have some deep-seated inadequacy?  Or is it that you’re quiet loners who need to stand alone?

The US is about 20 years from being a minor player on the world stage.  It’s time to come to grips with flabby multilateralism.  It’s multilateralism or ruin.

Apparently, conservatives will choose ruin.

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

I do want the ‘man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate’.  Got him!  He’s Barack Hussein Obama’s running mate.  If you don’t believe it, just ask him.

And, yeah, if a violent, ongoing occupation is your definition of victory, we certainly have achieved victory in Iraq.  We’ll continue to achieve that victory until we leave, too, at which point it will return to its natural state, a brutal dictatorship held together by a small, power-mad, authoritarian leadership.

There’s just no comparison. Obama’s own running mate warned this week that Obama’s youth and inexperience will invite a crisis — indeed a crisis “generated” precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

Every president gets tested on the world stage.  It’s like being the new kid at school.  Even the allies will test President Obama.  Our allies would test President McCain, too, assuming we would retain any allies after electing that antagonistic crackpot.

So, I agree, there’s just no comparison.

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he’s been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq was such a catastrophic error, that even minor improvements in the situation, most of which are not attributable to ‘the surge’, is now considered a success.

Obama was against the Iraq war.  He resoundingly passed the real test.  Every policy change after that has been devised to try to stop the bleeding.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

South Ossetia wanted independence from Georgia.  Georgia cracked down.  Russia invaded Georgia to keep the peace.  It’s a bit more complicated than a black and white thinker like John McCain could ever understand.

Every crisis requires the ability to analyze and understand the situation.  John McCain, like most conservatives, lacks the ability to grasp nuance and climate.

Russia is evil.

War is always good.

Marijuana is always bad.

Abortion is always murder.

Gay marriage is always an abomination.

We need a Constitutional amendment to prevent flag burning.

The last one is always my favorite.  That’s funny shit.

But, the world is not so simple.  Nothing is black and white.

Today’s economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

I’m for the guy who can speak in complete sentences, check his own email, and make wise decisions based on thoughtful consideration.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

hotfreepress@gmail.com

Tags: Biden, democrat, Georgia, Krauthammer, Limbaugh, McCain, Obama, Palin, republican, Russia, South Ossetia, stalwart