This Q&A with reporters speaks for itself:
I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception???
Is he for real?
Oh. My. G-d!
Barack Obama is going to make mincemeat out of this guy. It’s going to be like watching Gore and Quayle against Admiral Stockdale all over again.
Although I am an Obama supporter, I have been genuinely stunned by McCain’s lapses lately. I had always thought of him as somewhat silver-tongued. What is going on with him?
Holy crap! I wonder if there is a youtube of that conversation anywhere.
This bit of snark in the comments section made me giggle:
Edited to add:
Zoe, I’ve wondered about that, too. It does not seem like him.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before **Shayna ** turned attack dog on McCain. She’s already done with Clinton, but I’m sure her marching order talking points are continuing to be emailed.
That’s over a year old, so you need to update your files.
So McCain isn’t sure about one of the programs that he voted for and wants to check on that before he’s caught in a “Gotcha?” What’s the problem?
First of all, you do know that Admiral Stockdale and John McCain share certain things in common, right? And that nobody could fairly accuse Stockdale of being an idiot?
Perhaps you really ought to clarify that right away, because I don’t think you really meant any disrespect to Admiral Stockdale, but you’re treating him rather one-dimensionally, making the same mistake others made who only knew the man from his vice-presidential run.
I recall in that debate that Al Gore made a point of mentioning how honored he was to share the stage with Stockdale, a Medal of Honor recipient and genuine national hero. Perhaps it would be a good idea to tread McCain the same way - idiots generally don’t learn how to fly A-4 Skyhawks. For as many problems as I had with Kerry, I never called him stupid.
I think McCain generally answers questions rather directly - this one is sort of an exception to that, and may genuinely reflect the fact that the man hasn’t devoted much time to the issue. McCain isn’t as hung up on social issues as some other politicians are, and while the man is pro-life, he isn’t going to make that issue his crusading life’s work like a Rick Santorum.
Wow. I was always fairly partial to McCain, despite the fact I disagree with a lot of his policies . . . but wow.
To be fair, he seems ready to admit his ignorance, rather than attempt to cover it up. But the ignorance itself just seems rather . . . stunning.
Rather than contraceptives, they should have asked him about lube. He’s been using it quite liberally to placate the religious right.
I look forward to holding you to this standard in the general election.
The man has been in politics for decades and he has absolutely nothing to say on the important and perennial topic of sex education? That strikes me as incredibly unlikely, but if true, still very damning.
If he was just having an awkward moment, so be it. It happens to a lot of people. It is…interesting…that this moment occurred on an issue on which most independents and the religious whackos McCain has to court disagree. But that could just be a coincidence.
And how about we agree now that not every criticism of McCain is impugning his patriotism?
That’s not really an excuse, though, is it? He either knows his own opinions or he doesn’t. This shows up one of the problems with a lot ofr politicians in general. They don’t really have opinions, they have “positions,” and their positions follow wahtever self-serving political calculus they think will help them the most. This is a perfect illustration of how cynical thjeir positions can be – McCain has to get somebody else to go check what his official position is. He can’t just say what he thinks.
Even if this story is a year old (and so what if it is? The media dug up Michelle Obama’s college thesis from the 80’s, for Christ’s sake. McCain’s answer to a policy question a year ago is inifinitely more relevant than that), I think he should be called out on the issue again. If he really wants to stand by Bush’s asinine abstinence only policies, he should be made to explain himself, not just gloss over it with a “whatever Bush is for, I’m for.”
On second thought, his constant “me too”-ing of Bush is probably great for Obama.
This story reminds me of the '96 election when Dole tried to slip a question about whether cigarettes are addictive and got hammered for it. Some partisan positions are extremely stupid when looked at objectively, and are embarrassing in General Elections, but the candidates are too chickenshit to annoy their base by admitting something is stupid, so these kinds of questions are tightropes for them.
How about criticizing him without calling him an idiot?
It is a perennial feature of American politics that liberals call conservatives idiots and conservatives call liberals unpatriotic. Now, if you want to play to type here, be my guest - but I think most thinking people will find it tiresome.
Incidentally, I thought Admiral Stockdale dominated that debate in '92. I thought he was by far the most compelling, entertaining (in a good way) and honest person on the stage.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think McCain’s answer was stupid, just kind of gutless. If there was any stupity involved at all, it was publicly admitting that he doesn’t know what all of his positions are. He was basically trying to avoid the question until he could formulate an official answer, but by feigning ignorance on whether condoms prevent the spread of AIDS, I think he made himself appear to be either completely uninformed (which I don’t believe he is) or a liar (which they all are to one degree or other).
That’s a total red herring. In this case, the politician in question was being an idiot. Any way you slice it, his answer was idiotic (politically or otherwise). If Obama comes forward tomorrow and declares that things were better for the US as a colony of Britain, I welcome your labeling of him as unpatriotic. Calling it like it is is beside the point.
My request is that you (and others) not turn any criticism into an attack on McCain’s patriotism. One can call a military hero an idiot without impugning his service. Referring to his military career is not addressing the criticism, it’s diverting it. Military heroes can say and do idiotic things, believe it or not. Indeed, not only can they say and do stupid things, they can themselves be quite stupid. Fortunately for all of us, intelligence and heroism are pretty weakly correlated.
My point about his service wasn’t to illustrate his patriotism, but his intelligence. I worked in the air community in the Navy, and for the considerable faults of the various Navy pilots I met, I encountered no idiots.
Most people are going to understand this on a rather instinctive level, so criticism of McCain ought to focus on other things. When Diogenes made a complaint that he was politically gutless on this issue, that was a much more accurate criticism here than one of idiocy.
One thing that liberals can’t quite accept about conservatives is that they don’t necessarily care about the minutae of public life, simply because they don’t think it’s any of the government’s damned business. McCain has spent most of his career working on national security, defense, good government reforms, low taxes, and smaller government.
If you’re someone who expects the federal government to deal with sexual education, then of course you’re going to demand that your candidates know something about it. But if McCain doesn’t think the feds should have anything to do with it, why should he make a point of studying it?
You must be missing a lot of Yank news in your part of the world. “Conservatives” below the 49th parallel spend an inordinate amount of time expressing concern that sex education NOT be taught OR that it be taught as a simple matter of abstinence. (See the senator’s actual exchange, for example, or the various statements on the topic emanating from the White House over the last seven years.) The Right very much wants government to be involved in all sorts of personal issues–just not the same issues–or the same issues with the same responses–as the Left.
I have no doubt that the vast majority of Navy pilots have a high IQ, are quick-witted, or whatever it is you mean by “no idiots.” I have extreme doubts that none of them are capable of doing something idiotic, or even being generally stupid, in the sense it is being used here: namely, knowing nothing about, or pretending to know nothing about, something one should know a lot about.
First, one needn’t “make a point of studying it” in order to have some intelligent opinion on the matter. Anyone who cares at all about politics has some intelligent opinion on the matter, and as a long-serving Senator there is no excuse for McCain not to have one.
Second, even if in his envisioned Presidency he would make no decisions on the subject because he punts it all to the states (an impossibility at least as it regards foreign policy), he has had to make decisions about this subject in the past. So knowing nothing about it is very bad, IMHO.
Is John McCain really “stumped” by the question "Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”
I think his response to that question is what prompted charges of idiocy, the idea that a man in his 70’s who has been a US Senator for 20 years doesn’t know that use of condoms can help prevent the spread of HIV. This isn’t a question like, should the government fund sex ed, or anything like that. It’s a factual question. He’s stumped? That could be characterized as an idiotic response, completely aside from whether the person who said it is an idiot. Smart people sometimes say idiotic things under pressure.
However, I sincerely hope that McCain does know how the answer to the question; I suspect he is afraid to say so for fear of alienating people who disagree with the use of contraception. Not being a mind reader, I can’t say if he truly is ignorant about this, or if he’s just being gutless. Neither is particularly flattering to him, though.
I am fairly ignorant about American politics, so correct me if I’m wrong - but one thing that’s always confused me about Republicans in America is that they say they’re for small government while at the same time they seem very invested in people’s private lives (like the issue of gay marriage, for example). Doesn’t small government mean that the government does the bare minimum necessary to keep a country running, trusting its citizens to think for themselves? I don’t follow US politics all that closely, but I do watch the news in general fairly religiously, and my impression has always been that the Republican party in the US only preaches small government in terms of finance.
But if he supports Bush’s Abstinence Only policy, as he says he does, then he DOES think the feds should have something to do with it. It’s a federal policy, which appropriates taxpayer money to fund Abstinence Only (and only Abstinence Only) education programs not only in schools, but also to preach to adults.
I don’t see how you can argue that the federal government taking money away from me to pay other people to tell adults not to have sex jibes in any way with philosophy that people’s private lives are none of the government’s business.
I wonder if Tom is right that you don’t really have a full appreciation for how relgiously puritanical and moralistic the GOP (starting with Bush himself) really is right now.