The 2008 and the 2000 McCain seem to be very different people. One of them was against the Bush tax cuts, one is for them. One found radical evangelicals a problem, one solicits their support. War policy seems to be pretty consistent, though.
Has McCain changed his views to appeal to the base, or has he really changed them? If elected, would he revert back to the old McCain, to get Democratic support, or would he stay the new Bush-lite McCain?
As president, there’s not much he can do along religious lines, so I’d say he would not be an “evangelical president” in the way Bush has been. He’s always been for the war, so this is nothing new. He wants to do something about Climate Change, unlike Bush. I suspect he’d be pragmatic about taxes and raise them if he thought there was no other way to balance the budget. I think he’s always looked for so-called strict construction interpretation of the Constitution, but he’d have to get any nominee through a Democratically controlled Senate. I see him compromising on that point, although it’s often hard to tell how any SCOTUS nominee is really going to turn out.
Bush never really had to contend with the Democrats much, but McCain will have to from day one. He has a history of working with them, and I suspect he’d continue that work.
So far his plan seems to be to do the same things President Bush is doing, but he plans for the outcome to be different. He’s a little vague about why it will be different, but he’s sure it will be.
[Billy*]
Destroy us all!
Destroy us all!
Destroy us all!
Destroy us all!
[/Billy]
(* Of *The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy)
Other than keep us in Iraq for 100 years, I really don’t know what he’d do.
The one thing I do like is the idea of opening up more areas for oil exploration. Back when oil was $20 a barrel, it made sense to lock up all those different areas for environmental and other reasons. When oil is $140 a barrel, we’re pumping out $1.4 billion a day to buy the stuff from other nations and we’re being criticized by them for not drilling our own damned oil, it makes sense to change the laws. (But this is another thread, people, not to be explored in detail here, please.)
All in all, even though I support Obama at this point and have a long history of being suspicious of John McCain, I am listening to what he says he’ll do as President. He does have a chance to sway my vote based on his ideas.
Well, initially he’ll cause a multitude of SDMB threads about how the election must have been rigged, because all the polls indicated Obama should have won. After that, it’s probably a tough call.
Probably take a long nap.
First he would get into an F-4 Phantom and drop bombs on Iran. Then, he would draft everyone between the ages of 15 and 50 into the Army and send them straight to Iraq. He’d also re-institute black slavery, and have Barack Obama put on a chain gang for sedition and treason. He would also institute a special “Israel tax” that would take 15% out of every American’s income and give it to Israel.
When he IS elected, he won’t do much different from what Obama would have done, but he’ll be much more rigorously scrutinized for it. Someone had the unmitigated audacity to call Clinton’s years “peaceful” on this board the other day. I disagree with McCain’s policies, but I can’t help but wonder what Bush could have gotten away with if he got away with it.
Well, now he’s got my vote! 
I suspect he will veto a lot of shit the Democratic Congress tries to push thru. Tax increases, bills to shut off funding for Iraq, things like that. Gridlock, in other words, which is not always a bad thing.
Regards,
Shodan
So they appear now, in hindsight and by comparison.
This is what I’m talking about. If Obama wins, how much is he going to get away with because everyone’s going “he’s so much better than the last guy!”
Which of you two is correct?
What would McCain do if elected? My money’s on pushing The Button during a senior moment.
Ask vice president Cheney for advice.
Have a stroke.
I suspect that if elected, McCain will slowly continue his decline into senility.
Strangely, he’d do that if he lost the election as well.
Whatever he does, he won’t remember doing it.
What exactly are you afraid he’ll try, that he might not get away with otherwise?
What concerns me is that he will face less scrutiny in general. People are now so deeply invested in him, they’ll handwave his mistakes and forgive his broken promises just like they did with Clinton. That doesn’t make McCain a better candidate, but I don’t believe that ultimately there would be much difference between their actions (rather than images) as Presidents. I hope I’m wrong, but my cynicism runs deep, even with a rock star like Obama.
Eh? Clinton didn’t “break” any promises, he just failed to deliver on some of them (gays in the military, universal health care) because of an unanticipated and, in hindsight, utterly incredible and irrational level of Pub opposition. Which Obama will not face, at least not to the same degree; the Pubs are going to remain gasping on the ropes at least until 2010 and probably a lot longer. There’ll be no Gingrich-equivalent in his first term. As for Clinton’s (non-sexual) mistakes – Somalia’s the only serious one that comes to mind, and it meant too little to most Americans to require any “handwaving” anyway.