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`Straight-Talking' McCain Devolves Into a Run-of-the-Mill Politician
Insight on the News, July 2, 2001 by Alan L. Anderson
It says something about our politics of the last eight years or so that a man hailed as a straight-talker can be called a liar by a variety of media pundits, and no one seems to notice. The straight-talker in question is Sen. John McCain. The chorus of media types calling him a liar began singing their four-part harmony around June 1 as news broke that "Senate Plurality Leader" Tom Daschle, D-S.D., would be weekending with the Republican senator from Arizona. By June 2, the Washington Post was reporting that McCain was talking with advisers about leaving the GOP.
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McCain tried to quell the speculation by releasing a statement that read in part, "[Als I have said repeatedly, I have no intention ... of running for president, nor do I have any intention of or cause to leave the Republican Party. I hope this will put an end to further speculation on this subject."
Of course, it didn't. On NBC's Meet the Press, Tim Russert told Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., "I've been covering politics for quite a while. When I hear a politician say no intention, alarms go off." In other words, bullfaddle.
Similarly, Howard Kurtz over at the Washington Post quotes McCain as telling the Post, "I have no intention of running again." Kurtz then adds in parentheses, "not exactly the most Shermanesque of statements" indicating Kurtz believes McCain may be intent on running again.
And so it goes. From print pundit Howard Fineman at Newsweek to talking heads such as Cokie Roberts over at ABC's This Week, the press naturally assumes McCain is considering, is envisioning, is intent on running should circumstances -- a weak Bush first term -- offer the opportunity.
Now, there is nothing at all new about politicians using wiggle words such as "envision, intention," etc. -- words so-called because they allow the politician wiggle room should he ever wish to do that which at the moment he is saying he won't do.
For example, it is not difficult to envision McCain telling Russert sometime in the spring of 2004, right after Russert reads back to McCain the statement McCain released a few days ago saying: "Well, Tim, at the time, I really had no intention of running when I made that statement. But the condition of the country, the weakness of the current incumbent, blah, blah, blah."
Nor is there anything new -- or even wrong, for that matter -- in the pundits reading into these wiggle words their exact intent, which is to convey the sense that while the politician in question is saying he won't do something, in fact he's thinking about it and just might do it.
What is new, though, in this recent melodrama surrounding McCain -- what proves the low state of American politics post-Clinton -- is that the politician using these wiggle words is a man whose entire political image consists of being an "unpolitician" who doesn't use wiggle words, who supposedly offers the public "straight-talk."
And what's particularly new about this melodrama is that after billing himself throughout a major presidential campaign as a straight-talker, when the man so billed uses wiggle words with the press, most in the press have become so blind as to miss the hypocrisy completely and let him get away with it. This new state of affairs is a Clinton legacy.
Pre-Clinton, the press would have pounced on any politician-- left, right or center -- who offered himself as a straight-talker and then spun so coyly as McCain has done here. Post-Clinton, the man whose entire media campaign was based on the image of a straight-talker essentially can be called a liar by the entire media and no one seems to notice the incongruity. Apparently, "straight-talker" post-Clinton means one not often given to perjury.
Of course, one could argue McCain isn't evading the truth and that, in fact, as he has stated, he really has no intention of, really isn't envisioning, running again. But, if this is the case, why hasn't McCain loudly castigated the entire press corps?
Other than being a straight-talker, McCain's other assets on his presidential curriculum vitae were honor and integrity. Virtually all the news media are questioning his integrity, portraying him as just a run-of-the-mill politician. Why no radical outbursts from the famed, fiery-tempered senator?
No, the truth most likely is as we see it. Our politics has reached the point where a senator can tell aides about leaving the GOP and launching a third-party challenge, then issue a statement flatly denying he is doing such and still emerge unscathed by charges of hypocrisy and with his image as a straight-talker intact. But then again, we once had a president who was convinced oral sex wasn't adultery and, indeed, wasn't even sex. And this president still gets high marks for his supposed intellectual brilliance.
So we really shouldn't be surprised, should we?
Alan L. Anderson writes on politics and culture from Roanoke, Ill.
COPYRIGHT 2001 News World Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
