The McCain Strategy: Tortured Tough Guy Lookin' for a Fight

Stop me if you've heard this before: John McCain is a maverick politician who has made a career out of putting his country first...lessons he learned while undergoing torture (or enhanced interrogation techniques when Americans perform such acts) as a prisoner of war for five and a half years.

CNN reports that the McCain camp will push McCain's "tough guy" image in hopes of painting Barack Obama as a Johnny-come-lately candidate who is weak on foreign policy and has a history of putting party and personal interests ahead of what is "good for the country."

The McCain camp also plans to highlight Obama's recent refusal to accept federal campaign dollars due to overwhelming fundraising success. Uh, exactly what is conservative about taking tax dollars to fund your campaign? I guess I shouldn't be too shocked considering that neconservatives like McCain subscribe to the belief that "war is peace" - so it only follows that accepting taxpayer dollars for a (miserable) campaign will one day be considered conservative as well. Indeed, sometimes down IS up!

The Obama campaign's extraordinary fundraising success is a big deal because, unlike McCain, Obama's support primarily comes from real people and not elitist corporate interests that typically fill GOP coffers. Although, to be fair, I should mention that those large corporate interests usually support both candidates so as to curry favor with both parties. Regardless, that Obama has a warchest large enough to refuse taxpayer funds is a testament to his ability to appeal to the individual voter. McCain, on the other hand, can make no such claim - and attacking Obama on this point is absolutely hilarious. How dare Obama refuse "free" public money!

What it boils down to is this: one collectivist campaign is calling out the other collectivist campaign for not being collectivist enough. You really can't make this stuff up.

More hilarious, though, is the mindless "McCain-as-war-hero" image that is ceaselessly beat into our brains on a daily basis. By now everyone in America is familiar with the John McCain story. And if you're not, by god, you must hate America. The requirement number one for entering any discussion about McCain is you must first acknowledge his five and a half year stint at the infamous Hanoi Hilton. After that you are "free" to criticize him, only the mildest of mild tones and only on the most cosmetic issues. But to question his actions as a bomber pilot during Vietnam, where he murdered Vietnamese civilians in over 20 raids on the country before being shot down and captured, is off limits.

Exactly how anyone learns to put his country first after enduring five and a half years in the Hanoi Hilton is beyond me. The article points to McCain's refusal to accept early release from his captors as a prime example, but that reasoning is patently false. If the Vietnamese had really wanted to release McCain, they hardly needed McCain's permission to do so. Can you name another prison wherein the Warden solicits the opinion of his or her prisoner before allowing them to leave? Of course not. Yet this is the logic the McCain camp wants you to believe when it suggests such absurdities.

That the McCain camp chose to portray their candidate as a "tough guy" was as predictable as bad acting in a porno film. Equally predictable, though much more absurd, are the reasons we are given to support McCain's tough guy image. I sincerely doubt McCain will face any tough questions surrounding his stint at the Hanoi Hilton, I accepted that fact long ago. But are we really supposed to believe McToughguy is the better candidate because he's more collectivist when it comes to taxpayer handouts?

Towards the end of the article, the author asks, "...is the McCain strategy accurate, and will it work?"

Sadly, I fear the majority of CNN readership will be able to digest that question with a straight face.