Tag Archives: mccain

Campaign Thoughts

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Eight years ago I was in a long-distance relationship with a grad student who lived in Atlanta. He came up north over his spring break, and we spent several days in Boston and one night on Cape Cod.

We stayed on Cape Cod on a painfully freezing Tuesday night in the middle of March. We were the only guests at our bed and breakfast. After checking into our room, we went out in search of dinner only to find the main street was dark and deserted. God knows what we were thinking, Cape Cod in the middle of the week in March. Eventually we found the Lobster Pot, a great seafood restaurant that was filled with people. It was an oasis of warmth and friendliness. We went in and had a great dinner.

When we woke up the next morning, there was a big breakfast waiting for us in the kitchen, along with a newspaper with word that Al Gore and George W. Bush had trounced their respective opponents, Bill Bradley and John McCain, in the previous day’s Super Tuesday primaries.

The next day, we were back in New Jersey and I drove C to the airport to send him off. We said our sad goodbyes at the gate.

Meanwhile, John McCain was dropping out of the race on CNN on the airport TV. He spoke outdoors, with a beautiful Arizona landscape as his backdrop.

For some reason I’ve always remembered that. It just compounded the sadness I was feeling at saying goodbye to C (with whom I broke up amicably three months later). I liked John McCain. He was a Republican, but I liked him, especially because he was running against the Dark Prince, George W. Bush, whom I loathed.

I’d been rooting for McCain to beat Bush. I’d been thrilled when, three days after Bush beat McCain in the South Carolina primary with the help of dirty tricks, McCain came back and beat Bush in the Arizona and Michigan primaries. I was working a part-time job at Barnes & Noble at the time. I watched the news of the Arizona and Michigan victories on the TV in the food court while on my dinner break, my mouth agape. Weird, the details we remember.

And then McCain lost all but the New England states on Super Tuesday, and then he dropped out, leaving Bush as the Republican nominee.

I’d always felt bad for McCain after he lost. Now, eight years later, he seems the likely Republican nominee. Even though I won’t vote for him in the fall, I feel happy for him. Not only is it an amazing comeback from last summer, but I feel like he’s getting what was denied to him eight years ago. He’ll be the second-oldest major party nominee ever (after Bob Dole), which inspires me; I hope I’m still visiting new horizons in my 70s.

Don’t get me wrong; I disagree with the man politically on most issues. But I respect and admire him more than I do any of the other GOP candidates.

So for the first time since JFK was elected almost 50 years ago, the next president will probably be a sitting U.S. senator: Obama, Clinton, or McCain. And I don’t loathe any of them.

It feels good.

NYTimes Endorsements

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The New York Times has endorsed Hillary Clinton and John McCain for the Democratic and Republican nominations.

This passage from the McCain endorsement is sure to get the most press:

Why, as a New York-based paper, are we not backing Rudolph Giuliani? Why not choose the man we endorsed for re-election in 1997 after a first term in which he showed that a dirty, dangerous, supposedly ungovernable city could become clean, safe and orderly? What about the man who stood fast on Sept. 11, when others, including President Bush, went AWOL?

That man is not running for president.

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

I don’t think the Times like Rudy very much anymore.

By the way, here’s the paper’s 1997 endorsement of Giuliani for re-election as mayor.