John McCain’s Dream World
I didn’t see McCain’s speech, but I heard enough snipits and read enough about it to feel comfortable enough to comment. What I take away from it was that Sen. McCain is in self-absorbed dream world. McCain’s speech covered just about every issue there is, and that’s the problem. It highlights one of the things I don’t like about John McCain - no vision. A vision is not a checked off task list, which is what McCain gave. In that sense, his speech was similar to so many State of the Union addresses - not a state of the union, rather a list of goodies the President wants.
A vision is what Reagan gave when we he talked about America being a shining city on a hill and his talk about the winning the Cold War. A vision is what Kennedy spoke about when he talked about putting a man on moon. A vision is what FDR spoke about in defeating the Axis and the freedom from fear. These are visions about freedom and human expansion.
My biggest pet peeve about McCain is that the man is all about himself. He’s always been about himself as an elected politician. This speech exemplifies this. Again no vision for the country. Not even a vision for the GOP, which is hopelessly rudderless at the moment. McCain has no interest in providing a vision for the GOP - he stated so when he said that he would be running against Congress and Bush. He cares nothing about providing coattails to those who should naturally be willing to work with him.
His notion that partisanship is a bad thing is probably the most troubling aspect of his speech. An efficient government that would allow him to do whatever it is that he wanted to do is a bad government. The most efficient government there is, is a dictatorship. I’ve always said that I support a gridlocked government - it means that the people cannot get screwed over any more than they are right now.
As far as I’m concerned, this speech continues to show me that a McCain presidency would be scary prospect.