McCain Takes the High Road

Gingrich Wallows in the Mire

“I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear.” – Sen. John McCain.

Frequent readers of this blog know that I’m a Democrat and seldom have good things to say about Republicans. There are exceptions, though, and today’s posting is one of them.

The back-story, of course, is that the whackadoodle fringe of the Republican Party received a double blow earlier this month. Not only did President Obama produce a copy of his original birth certificate, with signatures and all, just a few days later he announced that Osama bin Laden had been found in Pakistan and killed.

Desperate for some way to spin at least some of this to their advantage, several rabid right spokesdorks suggested that bin Laden would never have been found without George Bush, Jr.’s “enhanced interrogation” measures early in the war. That sterile phrase translates into water-boarding and other forms of torture and elicits the dreadful images of Abu Ghraib.

Michael Mukasey, who was one of Bush’s egregious attorneys general, said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed “broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information – including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden.”

McCain knows a lot about torture. He was shot down in Vietnam in 1967 and was a prisoner of war there until 1973. He was repeatedly tortured and deals with the physical effects to this day.

Mukasey’s suggestion that U.S. torture led to bin Laden’s capture appeared in the Washington Post, and that’s where McCain rebutted him in an op-ed piece on May 11th. He responded to Mukasey’s claim quoted above by saying, “That is false.”

He also said, “Individuals might forfeit their life as punishment for breaking laws, but even then, as recognized in our Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, they are still entitled to respect for their basic human dignity, even if they have denied that right to others.”

And that’s the point, isn’t it? We cannot preserve and extol our treasured rights and freedoms by denying them to others. We cannot legitimize torture in some foreign land or in some maximum-security prison without staining the very principles we are supposedly defending.

There was more from the apologists – search Rick Santorum and Dick Cheney if you want to know more – I don’t – but they were careful not to slander McCain himself, which is something new. It is refreshing to see a Republican draw a line that he won’t cross without having all the other elephants dump on him.

Before he ran for president, Sen. McCain was known as a statesman and someone who worked for bipartisan progress. His fellow Republicans called him a “maverick” because he didn’t always toe the party line – and it wasn’t always a term of endearment. He seemed to relinquish that title, even while he wrapped himself in it, in his campaign against Barak Obama. Perhaps now he can claim it again. (See McCain’s full text at http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bin-ladens-death-and-the-debate-over-torture/2011/05/11/AFd1mdsG_story.html.)

Of all the issues that call out for righteous rejection by Republicans who still claim some vestige of honor, the defense of torture is perhaps the most important, and the most obvious. McCain’s principled refusal to condone “enhanced interrogation” shows courage and conviction that have been scarce among GOP legislators. Maybe it will encourage others in the party to speak out against their colleagues who go too far.

Unfortunately, it didn’t inspire Newt Gingrich, who stepped out of line by calling Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan “right wing social engineering” on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Despite the accuracy of his statement, he was castigated and pilloried and left for dead by the right wing echo chamber, and instead of defending his remark, he proceeded to apologize and make the bizarre excuse that he had been tricked into saying it.

Then, on Faux News, he came up with the ultimate denial, saying, “any ad which quotes what I said Sunday is a falsehood.”

No statesman Newt. Needless to say, his fledgling presidential campaign sank before it hit the water. Thank goodness.

May isn’t over, but so far it’s been a bad month for Republicans and their presidential hopefuls. The birth certificate did in Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich self-destructed, and Mike Huckabee decided he didn’t have enough fire in his belly. Osama bin Laden’s death gave President Obama a bump in the polls. Paul Ryan’s attempt to dismantle Medicare isn’t playing in Peoria, or anywhere else. Just yesterday, the Democratic candidate in a “safe” Republican district in New York won a House seat. Glenn Beck was apparently fired and Rush Limbaugh’s ratings are in the toilet. And what’s left of the GOP presidential bullpen seems to be populated by klutzes fresh off the farm-team.

But in the long run, Republicans can be proud of their former standard-bearer and once-and-perhaps-future maverick and statesman, John McCain.

It's Deja Vu All Over Again

Government Shut-down Dangerous for Republicans

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  – George Santayana, 1863-1952.

The mantra that smaller government is better government resonates among a certain percentage of the population, and it has been repeated as gospel since Saint Ronald Reagan’s successful campaign for the presidency. (The people who do so ignore the fact that Reagan did nothing to reduce the size of the federal government.)

Support for reducing the size of the government evaporates when that government is shut down. We saw that happen in 1995, when an impasse between the two political parties in Congress resulted in such a shut-down. It wasn’t that long ago, but many seem to have forgotten it. Republicans forget it at their peril, and I’m delighted.

Bill Clinton had been elected president in 1992 by a healthy margin over incumbent President George H.W. Bush and independent spoiler Ross Perot. The Democratic Senate majority was increased by one to 57; the Democratic majority in the House was reduced by nine members, but was still a healthy 258 to 176.

The pendulum swung the other way in the 1994 mid-term elections. The Democrats lost a net nine seats in the Senate and the Republicans took over with a slim 52 to 48 majority. The House did even better, with the GOP getting a 230 to 204 majority.

Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA), who became the new speaker of the House, and several of his colleagues had captured the votes of a significant portion of the electorate by offering a “Contract with America” in which they promised to make several changes in the way Congress conducted its business. (If you’ve forgotten what those changes were, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America.)

Despite their fragile majorities, the Republicans arrived in Washington in January, 1995, ready to “kick butt and take names.” Does this sound familiar? It should. They were still full of vim and vinegar in November, when a continuing resolution to increase the federal deficit was about to expire, demanding that President Clinton agree to certain budget cuts or face a shut-down in non-essential government operations. It was widely described as a game of “Chicken.”

Neither side blinked, the government went into shut-down, and most voters blamed the Republicans. They didn’t like the results, temporary as they were. Their neighbors who worked for the government were furloughed without pay. It was always hard to reach the Social Security Administration, but now it was impossible. National parks were locked up. Passport and visa applications weren’t processed. Veterans’ health services were stopped. Even when the impasse ended, there were long-term residual effects. The economy suffered, and lots of people were mad. And they weren’t mad at the Democrats.

As I have been writing this I have been listening to the last day of debate about the current budget in the U.S. Senate. There seems to be agreement about numbers, but the big issue remaining is whether to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. Republican senators keep saying it’s about spending, but apparently it’s more about the usual partisan social issues. We’ll have to see whether the majority of voters will appreciate this recalcitrance. Remember that this is only about spending for the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends September 30th. The real fight is about next year’s budget, and that has yet to commence.

The founders of this country put together a remarkable combination of institutions to share political power. We tend to think of those founders as wise and detached, but the Constitution they created was the result of knock-down, drag-out battles with strong emotions on all sides. The document they drafted insured that such infighting would continue forever.

The House of Representatives is the institution that most closely reflects the whims of the electorate. It’s where the newest fashions are tried on, and we all know how permanent fashions tend to be. House members may all be sporting top hats or kaftans or bola ties or bare midriffs, but Senators stick with their dark suits and wide ties. Only if the new fashion displays some permanence will they gradually follow suit. (No apologies for the pun.)

Will bare midriffs still be fashionable in 2012? We will soon know. Will voters fondly remember the federal shut-down of April, 2011? We’ll know that, too.

As I write this, only a few hours remain before this shut-down occurs or is prevented. I don’t think the Republican Party will gain in either case.