Common Sense University

This is the first of two Presidential candidate’s assessments and using strictly alphabetical order, today’s review is about John McCain, the Republican Party nominee. Common Sense Politics will post a similar article next about Barack Obama, the Democrat party candidate. We will not delve into their life stories in any detail other than as it affects their current positions, their recent history and actions and their respective proposals for the next years after being elected to be President.

John Sidney McCain III was born into a family of longtime military officers (his father and his grandfather were Admirals in the U.S. Navy) and he has been a United States Senator since 1987 and was most recently (in November 2004) re-elected for a fourth term by the voters in Arizona. He will be 72 years old in late August, is married to his wife Cindy since 1980 and they have four children together, ages 24 to 17, the youngest one adopted in 1991 from an orphanage of Mother Teresa. McCain is well known and considered a war hero for having been a POW in Vietnam for 5.5 years from 1967 until his release in 1972.

Now then, his political career has been seen as that of a maverick. He has maintained a certain amount of independence and has voted against party line many times including voting in opposition of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts. Some of his positions have been even considered outright liberal by conservatives when he crossed party lines and voted with the Democrats on issues such as campaign finance reform and last year on immigration reform in a bill co-sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy. The effort to pass this legislation failed when Congress heard from the American people in vast numbers who were opposed to the law. He now claims that he heard the people and agrees that we should secure the border (to Mexico) first before any kind of immigration reform law should be considered.

But he achieved receiving the nomination for President of the Republican Party over a number of competitors, as we all know. He considers himself the Chairman of the so called ‘Straight Talk Express’ meaning that you will get his unvarnished opinion every time he speaks. His strength during the primary campaign was the fact that he had been right about how the Iraq War was managed wrongly (by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) for some time and proven correct when he strongly supported a surge in troops that has now turned out to have been successful. McCain’s strengths are in the areas of security, foreign policy and war execution while his knowledge of economics and energy issues including his support for Global Change policies seem to be less strong. He finds himself in a peculiar position since the conservative base of the Republican Party is not sold on him, in fact, has been and still is very critical of him. It will remain to be seen how many of them will sit out this election come November. McCain is counting on the support from the moderate and independent voters and even cross-over Democrats. There is not a single speech by John McCain in which he does not say “My friends, I know what is right for America and I will get things done. I have worked successfully in Congress with members of the Democrat Party and therefore know what it takes to do just that and get results!” These are very strong words and we do not think that they provide a sense of comfort for many Republicans, especially conservatives. They know what he has done in the past when he crossed party lines to get things done. They are afraid that he will do this again should he become President next January. His independent positions have several times gotten results diametrically opposed by conservatives and we believe that is the main reason why his support among Republican Party faithful is not solid, or as solid as it could be.

He has not yet chosen a running mate and he has ample time to do that in the weeks to come, he has over two months in fact to do so. This has of course not kept the pundits and the media from daily speculation as to whom he, John McCain, might pick. We will not enter such speculations but we think that his selection criteria have to include the VP candidate’s readiness to step in should something happen to McCain as well as some proven executive experience. Heaven forbid, he picks another United States Senator like Joe Lieberman or Lindsey Graham. They are his close and trusted friends and have been at his side on many issues for several years. And while trust should be a factor in his selection process, it should not be an overriding one. We have witnessed John McCain to be very sensitive towards criticism, his responses have many times been very caustic, resulting in his reputation as having a temper and ‘easily flying off the handle’. A great number of citizens consider this and his age strong reasons not to vote for him.

Let us look at what he has promised should he become President:

• A strong defense of the country and no early withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan;
• Determined to continue the War on Terror;
• Extending the Bush tax cuts which are expiring in 2010;
• Nominating constructionist judges to the Federal benches and especially the United States Supreme Court like John Roberts and Antonin Scalia;
• He is FOR oil drilling on the Outer Continental shelves but AGAINST drilling in ANWR (Alaska);
• He proposes to built nearly fifty additional nuclear power plants across America;
• He supports efforts to fight Global Warming (Climate Change) and strong pursuit of developing alternative energies.

These are the main issues in his campaign, a truly mixed bag of conservative and moderate ideas. It might serve him well come election time in that he has something for a lot of people. It cannot be considered a staunch conservative agenda but there is enough moderation that people can vote for him. This is where the element of trust comes in: Will the conservatives in America trust him to remain faithful to their basic beliefs or will they vote for him as the lesser of two evils before sitting out the election altogether? There are still 135 days until November 5 and a lot of things can happen. There will be the selection of his Vice Presidential running mate, there will be the Republican convention in early September, there should be at least three Presidential debates with Senator Obama and the economy and the War in Iraq can still change drastically and they could be strong factors influencing and even determining the outcome of this year’s election.

One thing that can be said though about John McCain, should he become President, there will be very few surprises as to his actions since he has a long and proven track record from his more than twenty years in the United States Senate. It will be up to the voters in November what they think to be most important issues for them and their families and friends in terms of security, safety and economy.

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