Obama’s Getting Into McCain’s Contemptuous Head
Both Jonathan Chait and Daniel Larison have great columns noting the how his contempt for his opponents always fuels John McCain’s campaigns. Jeebus–Larison sounds like bmaz at his crankiest:
McCain exploits the concept of honor and frames every disagreement in terms of honor and dishonor, so it is particularly revealing that he is willing to launch dishonest and dishonorable attacks, because this drives home how much his concept of honor is intertwined with his own visceral reactions to opponents and with his self-interest. Contrary to the conventional pundit interpretation that McCain has “sold his soul” and abandoned his once-honorable former self, the thing to understand about McCain’s lies in this campaign is that he invests these misrepresentations with his utter contempt for his opponents. From McCain’s perspective, this infusion of contempt seems to transform shoddy, baseless attacks that disgrace him into indictments of the other politicians (e.g., Romney wants to surrender in Iraq, Obama would rather lose a war than lose an election). If McCain thinks he is always honorable, resistance to him and his ideas must ultimately be villainous and vicious, and we have seen him deploy his perverse, solipsistic ends-justify-the-means concept of honor against Romney and now against Obama. McCain’s admirers have largely missed this either because they happened to agree with McCain on policy or because they have mistaken his language of honor and principle to refer to the meanings that they attach to these terms.
In any public confrontation that McCain has, he strives to show that he has kept faith with the public and his opponents have betrayed the public trust. This isn’t because McCain is actually some devoted servant of the public interest, but because he has an irrepressible self-righteous streak that he thinks permits him to impugn the integrity of anyone who gets on his nerves or gets in his way. Hence it was not enough for him to find fault with action or inaction by the SEC–Chris Cox must have betrayed the public trust. Because McCain’s views are visceral, not intellectual, and he is not interested in policy detail, everything is a morality play, and it goes without saying that he thinks he is the hero.
[snip]
The important thing about McCain’s lying about Obama and his positions, which he has been doing on and off for months, is not that it marks some great break with a previously honorable campaign style, but that it reveals the completely opportunistic approach to campaigning–and policymaking, for that matter–that McCain has embraced his entire career. [my emphasis]
Larison nails the ties between McCain’s own self-rightousness and his attempts to cloak baseless attacks on his opponents in the trappings of honor–as well as his aversion to policy.
Which is why I think McCain’s response this week is even more fraught with danger for McCain than the polls yet reflect.
When McCain contemptuously says in the video above (at 1:36):
Maybe just this once [Obama] could spare us the lectures and admit to his own poor judgment in contributing to these problems.
He’s trying to deploy the same contempt Chait and Larison describe so well. He’s trying to inflict a cost on Obama for being willing to talk about policy by reframing those policy discussions as "lectures." He’s doing this for two reasons. To try to make Obama want to shut up. And to distract from questions of whether Obama’s policy discussions rightly interpret events or not. As Larison describes so well, McCain is trying to substitute a visceral reaction against Obama for a substantive policy discussion.
Because, of course, McCain loses on just about every policy issue in this campaign. When McCain calls for doing the same thing to health care as he and his allies have to the banking industry even as the banking industry collapses…
Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.
… He has to try to make policy discussions themselves dishonorable. But we’re at a moment where everyone wants to–has to, really–talk about policy.
This moment–in which Obama’s judgment on a complex issue proves right while all the evidence proves McCain to be dead wrong–reminds me of McCain’s previously worst moment in this campaign: when Obama traveled to Iraq, proved his stature on the world stage, just as Nuri al-Maliki was adopting Obama’s plan for withdrawal from Iraq. Then, as now, McCain was forced not only to admit that policy matters, but that Obama was right and McCain wrong on a critical policy issue.
When McCain said, "spare us the lectures," all I could think of was a high school flunkie who was belittling one of the smart kids in an attempt to avoid admitting his own frustration with being an academic failure. McCain was trying to make "smart" uncool.
John McCain is revealing a fundamental insecurity about being wrong, wrong, wrong on the issues, a bitterness that others would deign to treat policy as an important matter. And it’s beginning to short-circuit his contempt-driven outrage. If John McCain doesn’t even believe his own hero worship anymore, then he’s got little left.
Sounds to me like McSame’s 5th-from-the-bottom academic finish at Annapolis might not have been purely hangover-caused, and that he’s known it for a long time. Similarly, the whole “honor” thing seems a reaction on his part to his own shame at (a) getting shot down and (b) making those tapes for the North Vietnamese. The “honor” thing as caused by his own shame would also be consistent with his bullying POW/MIA families and his attempts to bury the history of POWs left behind in Vietnam and the US gov’t’s knowledge thereof, particularly as regards Nixon’s/Ford’s unwillingness to pay reparations for their repatriation.
Please can we have the statesman as President instead of the whiny Fox pundit?
From Reagan on, the the Repubs have made smart uncool. Remember the attacks against Carter? Then there’s “guy-you’d-like-to-have-a-beer-with” — he may not be ‘cool’, but he’s definitely not smart-and-uncool. Somehow Repubs have made flunking out a precondition for governing.
Simply put, mcShame has identified himself with his ego ideal (of honor). He cannot see the person we see. He only sees his idealized image, the person he wishes he were. Contrarily, he projects onto others the abased, dishonored self he really is.
Well done!
Absolutely REQUIRED viewing for EVERY American of every age. Teach your children, your parents and your neighbors. Make them sit and watch this:
Money As Debt
http://breadwithcircus.com/
We stand at the edge of the collapse of the entire financial system, and this video not only shows why, in the simplest possible terms, but who is in fact behind it.
Obama will be calm in the upcoming debates, and McCain will give off an air of barely controlled desperation. Whether this makes any difference or not, I can’t possibly predict.
I agree with scribe that attributing McCain’s character to excessive drinking or to repercussions of boxing matches, as some have advocated, is not fruitful. There is a condition that arises in childhood that is characterizd by impulsiveness, distractibility, and short attention span. Children so afflicted have difficulty following directions, attending to detail, which result in problems in reading and the development of coherent thought. They often are frustrated by an inability to meet parental and general social expectations, giving rise to antisocial tendencies that can be reflected in quarrelsomness, fighting, rule breaking, and later a reputation for juvenile delinquency.
I have mentioned previously that I take a dim view of armchair diagnosis, but I can’t help but think that some discussion of the conduct of those seeking high public office require some “vetting” by knowlegeable observers. In this regard, I appreciate what Larison and Chait had to say. I see in McCain a similarity to Bush in this impulsiveness, inattention to detail, and outright contempt for analysis, as well as for those can do it. These are not the sorts that we should have governing the country, no matter how badly they wish to do so.
Given what I know about ptsd, McCain’s ability to regulate his emotion is not there. I think that O has an obligation to “poke the bear” as we say in our trade. By doing this he will allow mcsame to demonstrate his clear lack of emotion regulation. I think many americans will then understand how his lack of regulation is a national security issue.
it is clear that O has superior emotion regulation skills.
Poke the bear, let it all come out!!
Yeah, and I think Obama has figured that out. He also said McCain was panicked or something, with will poke the bear some more.
“Poke the bear; let it all come out”. Good idea. There is a definite problem in emotional “disregulation” as well as a cognitive deficiency. Perhaps a response in the debate to an almost certain assertion of superior honor and decency, would be just the needed sort of poke.
PS, At this stage of things it doesn’t matter whether the cause of things is ptsd, adhd, or brain lesions, the important thing is the nature of the man seeking to run the government, and whether he/she is up to the job.
Agreed. It’s a combination.. but the cause is not important. It’s the man, a 72 year old self-obsessed man with no pause button.
emptywheel,
excellently said.
as always.
thanks.
mcsame and the repuglitards are running on PURE PROJECTION now
I’ve been watchin mcsame talk about Obama’s “Years” in washington, and how out of touch Obama has become in ALL THOSE YEARS
and I been watchin mcsame tell us how Obama is responsible for the economic crash
and I can’t hel[p but see that mcsame ain’t talkin about Obama
mcsame is talkin about mcsame
when that little nugget hits the mainstream, say hello to the 67 Democratic Senators …
McCain Says One Thing and THEN Votes The Opposite! When you hear McCain talk, think — Wizard of Oz.
http://www.salon.com/env/featu…..newsletter
I interpret the whole ’spare us the lectures’ thing in a slightly different light. I see it as another one of mcCain’s “he’s an elitist” reverse snobbery attacks, spiced up with with a backhanded intimation that Obama is claiming a bit of undeserved superiority…in other words, we’re back to the ‘uppity xxxxxx’ racist comments.
when a stupid senile twofaced lying whinny assed titty baby repuglitard says “spare us the lecture”, you probably wanna here the lecture
and does anybody else make this connection ???
Spare us the lecture = GET OFF MY LAWN
Brilliant post. Brilliant video.
Brilliant insights.
This really, really needs to get into the wider conversation.
And whoa… does this ever expose the dangers of the vapid ‘celebrity and personality based’ type of campaign that the Rovians can run with their eyes closed.
What McCain is revealing is John McCain. Like the man he wants to succeed, McCain is a wannabe who substitutes aggression for talent because he’s not up to his ancestors’ achievements. Also like Bush, that’s been obvious for decades, though it is now coming into finer relief.
A few examples. McCain wasn’t much of a boxer at the Academy, so he pretended his head was a brick wall. He wasn’t much for academics, so he pretended the highest commands of a complex military could be achieved by aggression — and the right parents and friends — rather than a firm grasp on strategy and tactics and military arts, failures obvious in his flying record. McCain doesn’t win when he thinks or matches wits, so he doesn’t.
McCain wasn’t much of a combat pilot compared to others similarly selected and trained. He lost five planes, his fifth on one of his few combat missions over North Vietnam. Like everyone else tortured long enough, he broke. His dad, then commanding the Pacific Fleet, heard his son’s taped “confession” along with thousands of others. Unable to admit human frailty or limitation — the substance of politics — John Boy is still trying to live it down.
McCain cares a lot about many things, his wives, his children, former POW’s among them. What’s important about his make-up isn’t that he doesn’t care deeply about these things, it’s how readily he gives them up when ambition comes calling.
Like the rest of us faced with our own ugly past, John makes up excuses and lies. His lies have to be bigger than his mistakes to cover them. John’s lies are big, frequent, pervasive. It’s what he is, like Bush on testosterone, with no clutch or brake and a sense of self-preservation that puts everyone and everything else at risk. Electing him as president would be making a Stephen King novel come alive. Not what we need, now or ever, thanks very much.
So McCain is so deep in his own world of self-righteous and honorable B.S., that he has started to believe it himself?
Like O.J. Simpson?