McCain's Worldview Is Only a Fantasy
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- McCain's Worldview Is Only a Fantasy
What worries me about the prospect of John McCain as president is that McCain intends to put “country first,” no matter what.
As we all know, John McCain is an American war hero. In fact, he’s not just a hero, but someone who faced evil in that cell in Hanoi and overcame it with sheer will, thus giving us one of the most compelling personal narratives in American political history. But it is precisely his past heroism that renders John McCain the wrong person for the Oval Office, because the inconvenient thing about heroes is that the moral outlooks they hold just don’t fit into the complexity of ordinary life.
McCain the Maverick barely even fit in when accepting his party’s nomination at a convention that may as well have taken place on Mars (personal highlight: Mitt Romney’s rant on “liberal Washington”). In his speech, McCain gushed about his running mate, Sarah Palin. Why? New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks puts it best: “The Palin pick allows John McCain to run the way he wants to … as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness.”
McCain certainly drove that point all the way home: “I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington and Washington changed us.”
But that’s exactly McCain’s problem; this country doesn’t need a hero. Poll after poll shows Americans want the government to confront problems like rising income inequality or inadequate healthcare — problems that McCain’s worldview completely fails to register.
Perhaps the most revealing glimpse into McCain’s moral outlook occurred several weeks ago at Rick Warren’s “values forum” at his Saddleback Church in California. There, the pastor subjected both Obama and McCain to lengthy interrogations on their respective positions on moral issues.
Warren asked both candidates whether evil exists and, if so, what we should do about it. Obama’s answer: “Evil does exist. I mean, we see evil all the time. We see evil in Darfur. We see evil sadly on the streets of our cities. We evil see in parents who have viciously abused their children…”
And what did John McCain say about evil? He said he will “defeat it.” That he’ll chase down Osama bin Laden to “the gates of hell.” That he’s going to take on “the transcendental challenge of the 21st century — radical Islamic terrorism.”
What’s striking about McCain’s grandiose view is that he sees evil as something “out there,” a hydra whose head must be cut off. I finally realized while watching the Republican National Convention that America to McCain and his party is an abstraction, a fundamentally decent place powered by “small town values,” where, if you work hard, you will acquire the American Dream. The idea that the United States has deep-rooted injustices that hardworking people can’t solve themselves just seems unimaginable.
Ironically, perhaps it’s Barack Obama’s community organizing in Chicago — so cheerily mocked by Palin — that’s the most appropriate experience for any future reformer-in-chief. Anyone who’s worked on anti-poverty programs can at least appreciate how deeply injustice becomes enrooted in our everyday social structures.
Then again, John McCain is a product of America, and America is not a place of nuance. In a way, we’re lucky; our society has never had to experience the horrors of the last century: no Dresden, no Auschwitz, no Hiroshima or Nagasaki. And when it was inconvenient to remember our contributions, we let memory lapse.
The historian Tony Judt has written brilliantly about our “forgotten 20th century,” noting, for instance: “As a consequence, the United States today is the only advanced democracy where public figures glorify and exalt the military, a sentiment familiar in Europe before 1945 but quite unknown today.”
So we’ve become conditioned to think that we’re always on the right side of history. In stark contrast, when you speak to a German about his country, you sense the Holocaust engraved on his reticence on the subject.
But as a result, Americans have yet to understand how societies can unwittingly sanction and overlook evil in the name of great causes. That’s the lesson imprinted on German national consciousness, and it’s the lesson we only now seem to be relearning from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
Interestingly, neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney used the word “torture” in their endorsements to describe what happened to McCain in Vietnam. How ironic that they’ve sanctioned the same techniques against our enemies in our global struggle against terror!
That’s what happens when you see the world in black and white; when you lose sight of the fact that our choices, no matter how well-intentioned, are subject to contingency, that often whether we do good or its opposite depends on mere chance.
That’s also why a hero wrought by a moment of clarity in a prison cell is the wrong man for the presidency. His tortured worldview simply leaves no room for uncertainty in uncertain times.
Thus, this election isn’t about voting for country or against it. It’s about voting for or against a chimera.
Lukasz Swiderski is a junior in the School of Foreign Service and is studying abroad at Oxford University in England. He can be reached at swiderski@thehoya.com. UNFOREIGN AFFAIRS appears every other Tuesday.
Political Bias on the Viewpoint Page? For more on this issue, visit The Hoya's blog, Leavey 421 - Inside the Newsroom.
Sep 09 2008 at 11:31 a.m.
It's pretty clear that St. Ignatius Loyola is not your editor. Senator McCain would be the first to admit that evil is not overcome by sheer will, but by the grace of God.
I'd also recommend you take the notion that "a moral outlook just doesn't hold up in the complexities of ordinary life" to the nearest Jesuit. Without a moral outlook, the man can't hold up to the complexities of a single day.
Indeed, a moral outlook is most helpful to living an ordinary day - and the very essence of living an extraordinary life (AMDG).
Sep 09 2008 at 1:04 p.m.
It's time young people in this election realized that the U.S. government is not a university; it is not a fraternity or a sorority. There are real issues to face here, and words, no matter how eloquent, are not enough to change reality. Sen. Obama would make a fine lecturing professor, or maybe even a minister with his style of sermonizing. The best choice for President, however, is John McCain.
Sep 09 2008 at 1:15 p.m.
In this edition, why are there two opinions bashing McCain and nothing from the other point of view?
This is disturbing, because the Hoya is usually more balanced. Don't fall into the trap that the Voice fell into long ago.
Sep 09 2008 at 1:15 p.m.
In reply to the comment above, by Patrick Agnew:
By a few steps, I think you have missed the point of the article. The author's statement that "the inconvenient thing about heroes is that the moral outlooks they hold just don’t fit into the complexity of ordinary life," should be agreed by every good Jesuit. The morality of heroes is a stark contrasted black and white. The hero slays the dragon, the hero overcomes his torture, the hero delivers the people to safety. But the truth is the dragon is in every man. The struggle of the true hero is the everyday inner struggle, the struggle of true morality.
In contrast to this, the morality that deposits evil being 'out there,' to be fought and conquered, ends up fooling itself in the "complexities of daily life". It is thus the great atrocities of mankind often come to be, when we hold the rest of the world morally responsible but forget to hold ourselves as well.
The author is right in saying this is a lesson America needs to learn. The reliance on military muscle, the glorification of bearing arms, the honor and glory of the army - these are deeply ingrained in the American psyche, as Senator McCain's campaign demonstrates. Europe still remembers its lesson from the devastation of the World Wars, and relies on diplomatic muscle rather than military might. Yet America is still stuck in the mindset of the Goliath, rather than the David.
I believe the author's intent in this article was to say that no hero is able to slay the beast of inequality in our social structure or poverty on our streets. Good people put the mechanisms in place, that hold the poor in a rut of self-deprecation and despair. It is essentially good, patriotic people who hold people up to different standards depending on their race, gender, class and background.
It is this a hero cannot know; it is this you need a real person for. It is this that the road of public service will teach you, and road of military heroism will not.
Sep 09 2008 at 3:03 p.m.
"It's time young people in this election realized that the U.S. government is not a university; it is not a fraternity or a sorority."
- Ironic statement to put here, given that Georgetown is not a university with officially recognized sororities and fraternities in the traditional sense (the service frats do not count). Just because we are in university does not make us any more or less qualified to have an opinion.
And I never knew that eloquence was a sign that one is out of touch with reality. Apparently intelligence isn't worth it in this election, only black and white ideas of the world.
Sep 09 2008 at 11:29 p.m.
I don't know when it became the vogue to completely ignore basic intellectual capacity as a qualification for president (maybe 2000), but I'm surprised that it's a position shared by so many at Georgetown.
Sep 10 2008 at 2:03 a.m.
Rest assured, the Hoya has not been "balanced" in years. Indeed, this edition's article on an alumni restaurant is the closest thing to a balanced article I've read here in some time. P.S.: it's a "green" salad restaurant, so take that praise for what it's worth. Maybe this year's staff will help pick up the last two or three years' slack...maybe not. This article is not a good start.
Sep 10 2008 at 10:58 p.m.
This entire article made sense only to the writer-Dr. Phil would call it: Toxic Logic
Sep 11 2008 at 3:42 a.m.
http://thehoya.com/blog/leavey421/archives/9
Feb 16 2009 at 4:04 p.m.
I agree, the poor guy seems to be living in a fantasy world. Even though i felt bad for the guy when he lost I would never be happy with that guy running the show.
Mar 19 2009 at 10:12 a.m.
The struggle of the true hero is the everyday inner struggle, the struggle of true morality.In contrast to this, the morality that deposits evil being 'out there,' to be fought and conquered, ends up fooling itself in the "complexities of daily life". It is thus the great atrocities of mankind often come to be, when we hold the rest of the world morally responsible but forget to hold ourselves as well.
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Mar 19 2009 at 10:21 a.m.
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