How would a McCain presidency compare to Bush?

For the purposes of this thread, let’s just imagine that McCain wins the upcoming election.

How would his presidency compare to that of George W. Bush?

A lot of people like to call him McSame, but would his presidency really be 4 years of the same policies as the previous 8? What differences might we expect?

Would McCain be an improvement over Bush, or maybe he would be even worse?

I don’t want to talk about if Obama can win or should win. I don’t want to compare a McCain presidency to an Obama presidency.

The foreign adventurism would be dialed up to 11. Not content with parrotting the neocon line (which would have him serially invading Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and anyone else Israel thinks of), he kind of wants to go to war in Georgia.

He’d of course be as big or bigger a fan of amnesty.

Some of the faith-based stuff might fall by the wayside as I think he is not really captive to the dumb wing of the Protestant church.

McCain would be an improvement over Bush, but that is a low bar.

He would actually push for alternate fuels and more nuclear power as he also pushed to drill everywhere. (Good & Bad but better than Bush)

He would do a better job at acting as CiC. He would get better supplies to the troops and more troops. However, he also might steam roll of carpet bomb Iran given any excuse at all. He would consider the draft. (Total package could be scary or he could scare Iran enough that all goes well. If I was Iran and McCain got elected I suspect I might back off a bit.)

His tax policy would continue to favor the rich and corporations. However he would actually open government contract bidding to companies not associated with Dick Cheney. He probably really would attack Pork and Earmarks. I believe him on that one. He would try to reduce the deficit, he is a Fiscal Conservative deep down. Barry Goldwater is his idol. I would be fearful of what he cuts to accomplish this.

He would end up put the Supreme Court firmly in the Right and I fear for many of our currently enjoyed rights and freedoms. This is in fact my greatest fear with McCain.

He would be friendly to Tech initiatives and domestic job growth, but I am not sure if he would put together the right team to promote these successfully.

So I think he will be better than Bush, but not great and that we cannot afford 4-8 more years of Republican rule.
Jim

He may not be captive to the “dumb wing of the Protestant Church”, but his Vice President sure will be, and he will be captive to his Vice President.

You’ll have a situation with a President, barely tolerated by his party’s base, being overshadowed by an unnaturally popular and vocal Vice-President. Republicans seeking office or re-election to office are going to want her to stump for them, not McCain, so she’ll be able to get pretty much anything she wants from Congressional Republicans. They’ll be happy to follow her lead and tell the old man to go pound sand. Her power will be magnified should Republicans pick up seats in 2010 based on her drawing power. Faith-based government? You ain’t seen nothing yet. The Bush Administration will look like one of tolerance and restraint. And McCain won’t be able to do a damned thing about, even if he were so inclined.

McCain’s Presidency will be summed up with one sentence; “I’m the brains of this outfit, but she’s the boss!”

McCain will probably be worse than Bush when it comes to foreign policy. In reality I don’t think Bush’s foreign policy agenda was that radical when he came to office. He became radicalized by 9/11 and came to believe all the adulation about him being a great war leader. After the failures in Iraq he has gradually become de-radicalized and his second term has generally been quite pragmatic for the most part with a far better SecDef and apparently less influence for Cheney.

McCain will be like the worst of the Bush years: reckless,blind to the facts on the ground, surrounded by like-minded zealots who tell the Great Leader what he wants to hear. In practical terms I think the chances of military action against Iran would be greatly increased and what begins as a limited strike by the US could easily escalate to full-scale war. There will probably be a series of diplomatic crises with Russia and China which won’t achieve anything meaningful in terms of reducing abuses by those countries but which will feed McCain’s delusions of being a world-historical figure and leave the US more isolated and less effective in dealing with many pressing global issues like nuclear proliferation.

On domestic issues I don’t get the impression that McCain has too many strong beliefs. However he would be perfectly willing to tow the GOP ideological line on taxes and regulation if he thinks it’s to his advantage. More likely he will compromise somewhat with the likely Democratic Congress leaving himself free to do what is really passionate about: wreaking havoc on the world stage.

**McCain seems to have a similar “go with the gut” approach to decision-making. ** The Bush presidency has been very weak on both planning and follow-through. You can expect the same from McCain.

(I actually consider McCain’s experience as a fighter pilot as a mark AGAINST him. Snap decisions are a GOOD thing in a dogfight. You’re moving at hundreds of miles an hour, and death is only a few seconds away. You’re better off making a quick decision, even if it’s wrong, than sitting in the cockpit and carefully weighing all your possible courses of action. But being President calls for a completely different set of command skills. You want a President to carefully consider all the options before acting. McCain has publicly admitted that that’s not how he operates.)

I think that McCain will be an improvment over Bush. He seems more thoughtful and nuanced.

Even if his ‘maverick’ persona was stronger in the past, I think it is still really there. He’s had to underplay it in order to get GOP’s support, but once he’s elected, I think we’ll see it more.

How do you figure it out? Unlike a lot of democrats here, I’d made peace with a McCain presidency sometime ago. Now however I just don’t know, his pandering to the RR didn’t bother me so much because it was obvious and unrequited for the most part. However since his tapping of Palin for the Veep spot I’m less sanguine than I was. Like Shot Clock, I don’t think he’ll be able to marginalize Palin after she basically handed him the election.

It is easy enough to marginalize a VP. It has been done time and again, starting with the very strong willed John Adams under George Washington. She’ll get to put on a show and try to stage herself for a run at the highest office after McCain, but he can keep her out of policy with ease.

Hmm… I don’t believe it is a secret here that I am voting McCain-Palin. I think that McCain is more likely to bring together a cabinet/ advising team that will challenge him and argue with him than Bush was. Bush leaned towards sycophants, who didn’t tell “The Decider” what he didn’t want to hear. I think McCain has a “Decider” type persona, but is more thoughtful. His record in Congress is rather bipartisan, and he will be likely to pick the brightest brains on both sides of the aisle.

Personally, I think that while he may have been a fighter pilot who was used to making snap decisions, he certainly paid the price for them. I think that his military background will make him more inclined to use diplomacy than go to war. I think he will be more thoughtful about Iraq than Bush was- however, I am not sure that war is winnable in the short term.

Furthermore, McCain is likely to bring with him more experience. Bush may have been an executive, but he was not privy to things that went on in the halls of power on a national stage. McCain knows how to manipulate a congress, know who gets what done in the Senate and the House, and know how to broker a compromise. That kind of experience is essential to doing anything with a domestic agenda.

Finally, McCain is going to be less tolerant of Putinesque shenanigans. (Remember Bush’s “I looked into his eyes…” line?) He will put his foot down. As bad as the Middle East situation is, Putinism has become increasingly capable of destabilizing Eastern Europe, and consequently, Western Europe. Last time Russia pursued a major expansion of territory, the American Government found itself pumping money into Western European and Euroasian economies under the Marshall plan to limit the damage. This time, we have over extended ourselves to the point where that will not be possible. We need to nip the situation in the bud, and find a creative way of doing that without resorting to the UN (where Russia’s veto power will screw up any attempt at getting things done in Eastern Europe). It is going to take someone with a fair bit of common sense to make it work, but it will also require a massive backbone.

He’ll replace all dying or resigning justices with conservative judges. The Supreme Court will probably overturn Roe vs. Wade and states will start banning abortion.

I can’t say for certain anything about anything else - he may want to go to war with Iran, but he can’t make the final decision on that. He wants to cut taxes on the rich, but he’d need the cooperation of Congress. He can veto bills with lots of pork in them, but if the pork is going to enough Republicans and Democrats, they can override his veto.

He won’t be as dangerous as he could be with a Republican congress.

For draft dodgers? :slight_smile:

That could happen, however if I’m Palin and more importantly her RR backers, I start exacting my pound of flesh upfront. She’s the one with the keys to the kingdom afterall. I guess we’ll find out in November.

I suspect he probably did not support Mr. Carter’s decision in that regard, no. But actually, that’s just an EWAG.

Well he could if a supine Congress once again abjured its obligations to declare war (something they have not had the guts to do (or not do) for fifty years).

Even absent a bogus GWB-style “authorization of force” from Congress, or whatever, it is entirely possible for a President to order missile strikes, etc. with no Congressional authority at all; he just has to claim some acute terrorist threat, etc., and certainly, the neocons have written the script for him to read from in that regard.

War With Russia: “Perhaps”

Oh Jesus. Because what could go wrong.

That’s sounds more like the mistake of a newbie who is unprepared for the dance politicians are expected to do when asked a controversial question.

I doubt Sarah Palin is really eager to get into a war with Russia.

She did a fair amount of dancing on other questions, though.

I don’t know if she knows what she’s eager to do. McCain has the “exporting freedom” bit between his teeth, and from what I’ve seen, it looks like she’s just swallowing whatever he is feeding her (which he in turn is being spoon-fed by the neocons).

Uh, McCain was not a fighter pilot; he flew a “light bomber” and he makes that point clear in his book, Faith of our Fathers. I think that was the title or at least close to it. I believe he has also publicly stated that fact publicly several times.

As for how a McCain presidency would compare to the Bush presidency, I don’t think you would see much difference at all.