Robert Dreyfuss: Hothead McCain

[babylonsister]

Hothead McCain

Robert Dreyfuss


If you've followed Senator John McCain at all, you've heard about his tendency to, well, explode. He's erupted at numerous Senate colleagues, including many Republicans, at the slightest provocation. "The thought of his being President sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper, and he worries me," wrote Republican Senator Thad Cochran, shortly before endorsing McCain.

You've heard about his penchant for bellicose rhetoric, whether appropriating a Beach Boys song in threatening to bomb Iran or telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that he doesn't care what he thinks about American plans to install missiles in Eastern Europe.

And you've heard, no doubt, about McCain's stubbornness. "No dissent, no opinion to the contrary, however reasonable, will be entertained," says Larry Wilkerson, a retired army colonel who was former Secretary of State Colin Powell's top aide. "Hardheaded is another way to say it. Arrogant is another way to say it. Hubristic is another way to say it. Too proud for his own good is another way to say it. It's a quality about him that disturbs me."

But what you may not have heard is an extended critique of the kind of Commander in Chief that Captain McCain might be. To combat what he likes to call "the transcendent challenge {of} radical Islamic extremism," McCain is drawing up plans for a new set of global institutions, from a potent covert operations unit to a "League of Democracies" that can bypass the balky United Nations, from an expanded NATO that will bump up against Russian interests in Central Asia and the Caucasus to a revived US unilateralism that will engage in "rogue state rollback" against his version of the "axis of evil." In all, it's a new apparatus designed to carry the "war on terror" deep into the twenty-first century.

"We created a number of institutions in the wake of World War II to deal with the situation," says Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top adviser on foreign policy. "And what Senator McCain wants to begin a dialogue about is, Do we need new structures and new institutions, both internally, in the US government, and externally, to recognize that the situation we face now is very, very different than the one we faced during the cold war?" Joining Scheunemann, a veteran neoconservative strategist and one of the chief architects of the Iraq War, are a panoply of like-minded neocons who've gathered to advise McCain, including Bill Kristol, James Woolsey, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Gary Schmitt and Maj. Ralph Peters. "There are some who've moved into his camp who scare me," Wilkerson says. "Scare me."

more...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080324/dreyfuss

[meegbear]

1. I read this article a coiple of times ...

and there was not one attack on Hillary. What gives?

[babylonsister]

2. Ha! It's called 'really worried should McCain get in'. Look at his

cast of advisors. :scared:

[meegbear]

3. No I agree, it's a good read ...

about a BAD cast of characters.

[Demeter]

4. A Most Important Analysis of Character

With obvious parallels to the Clinton character as revealed in the campaign.

[BearSquirrel2]

5. He's a real two-face then or Bipolar ...

In public, McCain has always seemed soft-spoken and quite frankly ... boring to me. Getting a lot of people out to talk about his apparently legendary temper might be a good way to make him seem unstable when contrasted with his public persona.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. Thanks for this

I can see quoting Cochran when talking to people on the fence about McCain.