[Peace-discuss] Would you rather have McCain?

[C. G. Estabrook]

I meant that the great alternative presented to the voters was really not much
of an alternative at all.  Most Americans realize that.

By a thin margin, more people voted for Obama than McCain, but Obama received
the votes of less than one-third of the electorate -- and many of those, only
because people thought that the only allowed alternative (McCain) was worse. In
a free vote, they would have chosen someone else.

The vast political distraction of the last year and more illustrates Gore
Vidal's remark, "Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are
held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates."  --CGE


John W. wrote:
> You do recall, right, that Obama is trying very hard to be bipartisan, and
> that McCain pledged to support Obama?  Obama has stated many times that he
> wants to work with people from "both sides of the aisle", but it will be he
> who sets the national agenda.  He will be, in other words, the Decider.
> 
> So the proof will be in the pudding.  Not in who he consults, but in what he
> ultimately decides to do.  I have no doubt that it'll be a mixed bag -
> neither as dark and dismal as you wish to portray it, nor as bright and
> progressively rosy as most of us would like to see.
> 
> I refuse to write history before it's even happened, perhaps because I don't
> consider myself gifted enough in prophecy.  I still hold out hope that Obama
> is a thoughtful man, relatively non-ideological but also relatively
> non-provincial compared to Bush and even McCain.  My hope could be entirely
> misplaced, though.
> 
> John
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 9:00 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu 
> <mailto:galliher at uiuc.edu>> wrote:
> 
> "...many of these appointments [McCain] would have made himself ... Obama
> does not want to be the guy who lost Iraq when it is close to being won..."
> 
> New York Times - January 19, 2009 Obama Reaches Out for McCain's Counsel By
> DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
> 
> WASHINGTON — Not long after Senator John McCain returned last month from an
> official trip to Iraq and Pakistan, he received a phone call from
> President-elect Barack Obama.
> 
> As contenders for the presidency, the two had hammered each other for much of
> 2008 over their conflicting approaches to foreign policy, especially in Iraq.
> (He'd lose a war! He'd stay a hundred years!) Now, however, Mr. Obama said he
> wanted Mr. McCain's advice, people in each camp briefed on the conversation
> said. What did he see on the trip? What did he learn?
> 
> It was just one step in a post-election courtship that historians say has few
> modern parallels, beginning with a private meeting in Mr. Obama's transition
> office in Chicago just two weeks after the vote. On Monday night, Mr. McCain
> will be the guest of honor at a black-tie dinner celebrating Mr. Obama's
> inauguration.
> 
> Over the last three months, Mr. Obama has quietly consulted Mr. McCain about
> many of the new administration's potential nominees to top national security
> jobs and about other issues — in one case relaying back a contender's answers
> to questions Mr. McCain had suggested.
> 
> Mr. McCain, meanwhile, has told colleagues "that many of these appointments
> he would have made himself," said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina
> Republican and a close McCain friend.
> 
> Fred I. Greenstein, emeritus professor of politics at Princeton, said: "I
> don't think there is a precedent for this. Sometimes there is bad blood,
> sometimes there is so-so blood, but rarely is there good blood."
> 
> It is "trademark Obama," Professor Greenstein said, noting that Mr. Obama's
> impulse to win over even ideological opposites appeared to date at least to
> his friendships with conservatives on The Harvard Law Review when he was
> president.
> 
> For Mr. Obama, cooperation with his defeated opponent could also provide a
> useful ally in the Senate, where Mr. McCain has parlayed his national
> popularity and go-his-own-way reputation into a role as a pivotal dealmaker
> over the last eight years. But on the subject of Iraq, in particular, their
> collaboration could also raise questions among Mr. Obama's liberal
> supporters, many of whom demonized Mr. McCain as a dangerous warmonger
> because of his staunch opposition to a pullout.
> 
> Mr. Obama arrived for their Chicago meeting on Nov. 16 with several 
> well-researched proposals to collaborate on involving some of Mr. McCain's
> favorite causes, including a commission to cut "corporate welfare," curbing
> waste in military procurement and an overhaul of immigration rules.
> 
> "The corporate welfare commission and military acquisition reform are two
> things the president-elect wants to do very soon," Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama's
> chief of staff and a participant in the meeting, said in an interview. The
> new administration is already preparing to introduce legislation echoing a
> previous McCain bill on the commission idea, Mr. Emanuel said, adding, "We
> have been very respectful and solicitous of his ideas."
> 
> Mr. Emanuel said he did not remember any discussion of Iraq. "Barack has been
> clear that he is going to stick to his responsible reduction in forces, and
> he hasn't changed from that," he said.
> 
> But Mr. Graham, who accompanied Mr. McCain to the meeting, said Mr. Obama
> took a notably different tone toward Iraq than he had during the campaign,
> emphasizing the common ground in their views.
> 
> "He said that he understands that we had differences but he wanted to let us
> know that he also understands that we have got to be responsible in how we
> leave Iraq," Mr. Graham recalled. "What the Obama-Biden administration has
> talked about is not losing the gains we have achieved. "
> 
> He added, "Obama does not want to be the guy who lost Iraq when it is close
> to being won."
> 
> Mr. Emanuel, whose only previous contact with Mr. Graham was negotiating the
> terms of the presidential debates, began calling him more than once a week to
> follow up. "Constantly," Mr. Emanuel said. "There has been a running
> dialogue."
> 
> Mr. Graham, in turn, called his counterpart "a pleasure to do business with."
> 
> 
> Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., a friend since Mr. McCain was the
> Navy's liaison to the Senate three decades ago, has also played intermediary.
> He called Mr. McCain to ask him to appear at the inaugural dinner, and he
> invited Mr. Graham on another recent trip to Iraq and Afghanistan.
> 
> "I know the vice president-elect is very concerned about the end game in
> Iraq," Mr. Graham said.
> 
> Some Senate Democrats have complained that Mr. Obama failed to seek their
> contributions about certain appointments — notably Leon E. Panetta as
> director of the Central Intelligence Agency. But the Obama transition team
> has consistently sought advice and feedback from Mr. McCain, the ranking
> Republican on the Armed Services Committee, on national security
> appointments, Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Graham both said.
> 
> Mr. Graham said Mr. McCain had enthusiastically supported those appointments:
> Gen. James L. Jones (an old McCain friend) as national security adviser; Gen.
> Eric K. Shinseki, the retired Army chief of staff, as secretary of veterans
> affairs; Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state; and most of all,
> retaining Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates.
> 
> "Picking Gates is a good statement that they are not going to pull out of
> Iraq in a way that undercuts the gains achieved," Mr. Graham said.
> 
> And when Mr. McCain raised "concerns" about the potential choice of Adm.
> Dennis C. Blair as director of national intelligence, Mr. Emanuel said, Mr.
> Obama's advisers asked the admiral to provide answers to Mr. McCain's
> questions to win his support. (Neither side would disclose the details of Mr.
> McCain's concerns, but Admiral Blair has faced past questions about his
> relations with the military dictators of Indonesia when he was in the Navy,
> and a possible conflict of interest when he later worked with a nonprofit
> group evaluating weapons systems.)
> 
> "We gave McCain time to talk through it, made sure he was briefed," Mr.
> Emanuel said.
> 
> Mr. Obama's cultivation of Mr. McCain is a stark contrast with the practices
> of past presidents. After the 2004 election, President Bush did not talk to
> his defeated opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, until Mr. Kerry
> visited the White House in March 2005 as part of a large group to celebrate
> the Red Sox victory in the World Series. ("I like to see Senator Kerry," Mr.
> Bush said, "except when we're fixing to debate.") And after Mr. Bush defeated
> Mr. McCain for the Republican nomination in 2000, the two had only
> perfunctory contact and often-adversarial relations for nearly two years.
> 
> Shortly before his second inauguration, former President Bill Clinton awarded
> his defeated opponent, Bob Dole, the Medal of Freedom. But it was an entirely
> ceremonial event. (Mr. Dole joked that had hoped to be at the White House
> picking up "the front door key" instead.)
> 
> A spokeswoman for Mr. McCain did not respond to several messages. But Mr.
> Graham said he and Mr. McCain were convinced that Mr. Obama was genuinely
> interested in working together with them on both domestic priorities and
> foreign policy.
> 
> "Not only is it good politics," Mr. Graham said, "it gives you an insight
> into who we are dealing with."
> 
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/us/politics/19mccain.html>
> 
>