I have a feeling McCain will be singing a completely different and less enthusiastic tune about the war if he doesn’t get the Repub nomination (and I don’t think anybody including him really thinks he will- largely due to unfair ageism- unless Rudy divorces/remarries again and Romney takes a 16 year old plural wife).
I think the bit that made Stewart see red was the long-tired implication that if you support pulling out, you adovcate surrender. And if you advocate surrender, you don’t ‘support the troops’, or worse, actively wish them harm.
When McCain basically called Stewart a liar to his face, I think that stepped over the line.
What makes McCain’s position (shared by too many others) so senseless is the false dichotomy that says a withdrawal out of Iraq is the equivalent to the entire western world going home, putting its feet up and saying, “well, come on then, blow me up.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Actions taken to combat terrorism come in many forms and operate on many different fronts. Attack Al Qaeda’s sources of funding. Isolate them politically through diplomacy. Get the spooks and spies working to chop them down from within. If necessary, drop some Rangers on a camp (when you have good intelligence telling you where they are) and do a little hit and run job on them. Do stuff that I can’t even think of. How many times have we heard “this is a new kind of war”? OK, fine, so then show you’re bringing some ingenuity to the fight. If all McCain and others have got is the same “Duuuuh, me shoot big gun now” strategy that’s been operating for 4/5 years now, then American foreign policy will remain a disaster forever.
I would hardly classify it as an exchange. McCain got 3 full sentences in at the end. Stewart was constantly interrupting him like he had to squeeze every one his talking points into the 8 minute interview. Ugh. I’m not a McCain fan but that was hardly an equal exchange. It played like a nail trying to argue with a hammer.
Really? You thought it was McCain who had trouble getting a word in edgewise?
I spent most of the interview marvelling at how McCain must have trained on O’Reilly style shows, to be able to keep talking without giving any openings for natural conversation like that.
Were we watching the same thing? I couldn’t understand a word McCain said, because Stewart kept chiming in before the man took a breath. They both kept talking and I bet the closed captionist was pissed (not that the ones that do the show are any good).
I thought they were both equally at fault for stepping all over what the other was saying. And McCain was parrotting the same phrase over and over - “The war was mishandled” or some barest nod to how your average American seems to be feeling about the “War on Terror” at this point. If someone kept repeating the same line at me and not really saying anything, I might get a little less careful about not stepping on his responses, too.
I also thought that Jon was a little steamed at one point - it seems like he takes it very seriously, that bullshit idea that anyone who doesn’t support the war doesn’t support the actual soldiers fighting.
I didn’t see this episode, since they forgot to air it on Bulgaria TV, but I saw an ep a couple years ago (maybe a year ago?) where Jon reported that McCain was giving a talk at…I can’t remember, maybe Bob Jones U., or the Discovery Institute or something (I know, could I possibly be more vague?) , and he seemed really upset, and addressed McCain directly, about how he (Jon) used to think he was an honest, common sense sort of person and how disappointed he was in McCain’s pandering to the right wing’s insane fringe. He seemed to take it really personal, that McCain had betrayed him.
So I’m not surprised that he didn’t let McCain get off easy.
Fucking LOVE this. Just awesome.
Just saw the tape last night. Actually thought it was a pretty good exchange. And I give McCain props for at least being willing to sit in the chair. Tho folks complain about canned lines, and interruptions, I don’t feel I actually get to see even that level of back and forth on significant issues very often. I agree it could have been better and we should see more of this type of thing, but what have you folks been watching that is better than this?
I thought JS made several good points that I feel are not voiced loudly and plainly enough. Really liked that JS said the fact that soldiers may think they are doing good ought not be the determining factor. And the weakness of the admin’s position was emphasized by the fact that McCain could do little other than repeat “We are where we are”, “Previous efforts were mismanaged” etc.
Really some of the best political TV I can recall seeing.
That’s the part that I thought was Stewart’s biggest misstep in the interview. That was Stewart making a pandering sound bite to his audience, the same problem that McCain had. McCain’s comment was a joke (maybe one that hit a little too close to home for Stewart) and he lashed out on something that was barely relevant to the situation. McCain wasn’t making those bizarre arguments that not supporting the war is the same as being unamerican. It was a strawman for Stewart to attack.
Is it because he’s a fake newsman and completely unqualified to even hold the office of dog catcher?
But he has a nice suit.
But doesn’t it at least beg an interesting question? What does a qualified politician look like? What qualities do they have, what experience do they have, etc. This, I’m sure, has been asked on the Dope before.
Schwarzenegger has proven that the man in the front office is a figurehead, it’s the people behind the scenes that the candidate chooses.
Oh, it wasn’t Arnie who proved that.
I was watching an interview of Jon Stewart tonight on (I think) Bill Moyer’s program, and I was struck by his intelligence, sincerity and genuine concern about the issues and the future of this country. I get the impression that Stewart has a lot of integrity.
That’s why he’d make a terrible politician.
[Bender] This guy’s too trustworthy. What’s his angle? [/Bender]
I"m not so sure. While I do agree that the audience needs to shut the hell up, for that debate at least Stewart was taking the anti-war (or depending on the spin one uses, anti-American) side and McCain was taking the pro-war (read: pro-American) side.
I believe McCain’s comment came right after Stewart said something about getting out of Iraq or some similarly strong position which got applause. In that context, it was just a little too close to the old “If you’re against being in Iraq, then you side with the terrorists and don’t support the troops” canard. It’s probable that McCain didn’t mean to imply that the audience was on the terrorists’ side, just Stewart’s, but Stewart had been trying to step on that canard already, and he very clearly wasn’t having any of that. It’s possible I may be reading too much into it and Stewart did hit a strawman, but I think that was a genuine inference he took from McCain’s shot and responded accordingly.