John McCain, Liar

I see DrewM. has posted too. I'll leave my take up anyway.

McCain stated he'd push for the Comprehensive Piece of Shit again by January 2009 -- he doesn't think it will be done by then, but he wants it done by then.

That would seem to indicate he lied about his "secure the borders" first pledge. If the borders have not be secured for, what, let's just call it thirty years instead of forever, it's an impossibility they'd be sealed within a single year of John McCain presidency. Despite making the pledge to "secure the borders" first, he has pushed for exactly none of the steps necessary to do so. It strains credibility to imagine he will suddenly advocate a border fence and the like as president when he's only grudgingly allowed, as a candidate and senator, he'll build the "goddamn fence" if we insist on it.

John Hawkins unloads on him and announces he won't be supporting him.

Ed Morrissey spins (lamely) that this isn't necessarily a contradiction -- it is, of course, unless one bizarrely conceives the border can be secured in a single year -- but then notes the hard choice we face. Barack Obama will push for the Comprehensive Piece of Shit, too, and will do an awful lot of other things we don't like.

What surprises me is that John McCain fetishizes his own integrity and honor and yet apparently doesn't think a promise made to conservatives "counts" -- perhaps he imagines we're children, or perhaps legally incompetent lunatics, who cannot enter binding contracts, and thus the contract he made with us can be voided without consequence?

I don't know. For a man to whom integrity and honor is supposedly so important one would imagine he'd be slightly less cavalier about lying and breaking a promise, even if he didn't like that promise.

Doubtless he disagrees with us. He thinks his policy is better. So what? The point of a promise is to, well, promise future outcomes, even if one wouldn't choose those outcomes in absence of a promise.

One doesn't really have to promise to do things one wants to do. One makes promises to do things one would not do, absent the promise.

This is the nasty edge of McCain's conception of himself as impeccably righteous -- he believes he's so above the rest of us in terms of honesty and integrity he can also decide what constitutes a lie and what constitutes bad behavior and what represents a broken promise. As in, his mind, his presidency is absolutely indispensible to America, tiny deceptions like this are not merely excusable, but downright imperative, and thus justified.

Or perhaps it's simpler: John McCain is unfailingly honorable; if he acts in a way that seems to be dishonorable, you must be perceiving it incorrectly, because John McCain is unfailingly honorable.

In fact, I imagine he conceives that there's a great deal of integrity in his "having the guts" to tell the conservative troglodytes what they needed to hear in order to secure the nomination.

I held off on this last night because I didn't know what to do. I guess my heart is with Hawkins, though my brain says Morrissey's right... Obama would be (marginally, I think) worse than McCain.

But Obama hasn't really flat-out lied to me.

That counts for something.

posted by Ace at 11:15 AM

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