What is McCain?

Playwright and screenwriter Sherman Yellin wrote an interesting piece in the HuffPo that I read this morning about McCain's negative advertising vis-a-vis Obama as a celebrity. Aside from pointing out that it is McCain who comes from the wealthier, "celebrity" background and not Obama who has worked his way up with conscientious effort and academic success that McCain can't touch, indeed falls completely at the opposite of the knowledge scale. But even more distinctively, McCain is using a comparison that raises his own history with women and his views of the whole feminine population.

To quote Yellin:

John McCain -- unlike the mythical Good Joe American he hopes to bamboozle with his vicious anti-Obama ads -- is an elitist/opportunist who abandoned a sick wife, carried on with an attractive blond beer heiress and married her, survived corruption charges as one of the Keating Five, and became a proxy billionaire through that romantic transaction which has helped to finance his political ambitions. To suggest that Obama, a brilliant man from a modest background, one who made his own luck and life through his intelligence and strength of character, has something in common with these Hollywood girls is less than an insult to Obama, who has young daughters and clearly loves them; it is an embarrassment to McCain, as it reveals his low view of women. They are dirty jokes to him. Be it a young Chelsea Clinton's awkward adolescent looks, or women being raped by gorillas, he finds the denigration and victimization of women a source of infinite jest. None of this is accidental.

It is to me amazing that McCain fools so many with the thinnest veneer of American heroics, trading on his imprisonment in Vietnam, but not alluding to his insufferably poor performance as a pilot (prec eeded by his sojourn around the bottom of his class at Annapolis) that cost our military so much in downed craft and got him captured in the first place. Jack Kennedy, while he often exaggerated his ultimate role as a PT Boat Captain in WWII, also traded on military heroics, but could show a positive history leading up to his boat's sinking and the escape he made from a dangerous situation.

I have cited notable occurrences of his tendency to use dirty humor at the expense of women and minorities, his opposition to basic civil rights issues and his wrecklessness as a lawmaker in previous posts (here, here and here), well documented for credible sources. All in all, McCain could be the target of especially negative advertising from Obama.

That he isn't, and that Obama continues to stress his policy positions and seeks input from professional sources (such as economists from both parties) to form those positions, over negative personal remarks on the Republican Presumptive Candidate is simply amazing. As he has stated:

"You know, I don't pay attention to John McCain's ads, although I do notice he doesn't seem to have anything to say very positive about himself. He seems to only be talking about me. You need to ask John McCain what he's for and not just what he's against."

And this is confusing many of McCain's former supporters (especially those who reacted badly to George W. Bush using the same kinds of Karl Rove techniques on McCain in 2000). As USC Communications Professor John Taplin says on his blog:

McCain’s campaign is pouring 60% of the TV budget into the Brittany Spears ad. I had a coffee today with a guy who once worked for McCain in the 2000 campaign. McCain told him, “You will never be ashamed of my campaign.” He wonders what happened to that John McCain.

What has happened, of course, is that Stephen Schwartz and Rick Davis of the old Karl Rove team are now running McCain's campaign and their candidate now puts getting elected ahead of ethics.

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