McCain, Like Bush, Can't Admit He's Wrong

by J Ro [courtesy of MyDD]

While we're waiting for more from the RBC, here's a little on McCain.

A minor flap Thursday and Friday is providing a window onto the kind of man John McCain is and the kind of President he would be.

On Thursday at a town hall event in Wisconsin, McCain said:

"I can tell you it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it is succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr City are quiet."

Never mind the fact that on that day there were three suicide bombings in and around Mosul. McCain was emphatically wrong when he said our troop numbers are down to "pre-surge levels." There were 130,000 troops in Iraq before the surge. After scheduled troop reductions, there will be 140,000 left.

Now, this inaccuracy really isn't a huge deal by itself. McCain may have simply got his numbers wrong - it's easy enough to do. Or he may have misspoke. It's the way the campaign has dealt with the resulting fallout that calls McCain's character into question.

First, campaign surrogates tried to play this off as a little grammar mistake, essentially arguing McCain meant to say we will draw down to pre-surge levels, not that we had already done so. However, the next day, McCain contradicted his own campaigns statements at a press conference:

Asked in the media avail if he got his facts wrong, McCain replied by stating that US troops levels are down -- but said nothing of pre-surge levels. "We have drawn down three of the five brigades. They're home. The marines [inaudible] are home. By the end of July, [inaudible] are back. That's just facts, those are just facts. The surge, we have drawn down from the surge and we will complete that drawdown to the end -- at the end of July. That's just a factual statement."

With both episodes caught on video, it's clear McCain is simply refusing to own up to his misstep. That kind of bullshit tends to insult the intelligence of even the old media press corps, and McCain received negative press from just about every major media outlet on Friday (Wall Street Journal, Politico, The Washington Post, MSNBC), including an extra "Pinocchio" from The Post's Fact Checker.

While it's nice to see the old media engage in a little political retribution every once in a while, McCain's refusal to admit he was wrong points to a host of other issues - this time actually meaningful.

A refusal to back down, a need to be right at all costs, and an unwillingness to let anything stand in the way of making a political point are all hallmarks of the Bush administration.

• When the Supreme Court ruled that the military commission system for Guantanamo Bay violated U.S. and international law, and that the Geneva Conventions apply to the detainees, Bush doubled down and goaded a weak Congress into passing a new Military Commissions Act legalizing exactly the kind of rights-infringing court system Bush wanted all along.
• Officials in the Bush administration - sometimes on orders from the president - have repeatedly stonewalled Congressional investigations by refusing to show up when subpoenaed or testify under oath.
• Famously, Bush was unable to name a mistake he made while in office back in 2004.

This list could go on.

Bush's failure to admit errors often turns simple mistakes into huge problems for America. I often wonder why Bush hasn't decided to withdraw from Iraq or roll back the tax cuts that have disastrously damaged our economy - two signature issues that will sink his legacy. Sometimes, I come to the conclusion that he's simply too far down the hole he dug for himself to admit he's wrong.

It looks like McCain is cut from the same cloth.

It would have been easy for McCain to simply say he misspoke or misremembered his statistics. Sure, he might take some flack for being too old to remember or too callous to care, but the episode would have died down much more quickly. Instead, by digging in his heels, sending out conflicting messages, and refusing to admit a mistake, McCain has ensured this story goes on - the press is still talking about it today.

This refusal to be wrong - similar to his refusal to "lose" a war - should give voters pause.

McCain has indicated he's stay in Iraq for "100 years," he'd think about preemptively bombing Iran and Syria, he'd make Bush's tax cuts permanent, and he'd appoint Supreme Court justices that are "clones" of Bush justices Roberts and Alito. With these kinds of dangerous policies combined with a refusal to back down or admit mistakes, it's impossible not to conclude that at best, a McCain presidency will be four more years of Bush, and at worst, he'd be, in the words of Cliff Schecter at yesterday's AFL-CIO book event, a "neocon on crack."

(P.S. If you're wondering what all those random links reading "McCain" are about, I'm participating in Chris Bowers' Google bombing project "Searching For McCain," and you should too!)

J Ro's opinions are his own and do not reflect those of any other person or organization.

Tags: John McCain, 2008 election, George Bush (all tags)