John McCain is an interesting cat; I mean, he is the maverick, right? Well, tie me up and call me a silly, but a close look at John McCain’s foreign policy speech shows the persona of John McCain to be nothing other than a political shell game.
Many of us know that the maverick image is a fraudulent ploy. He was against torture before he was for it. He denounced the agents of intolerance before he embraced them. But those are facts, and they have no relevance to framing of a political debate and narrative (I weep with you).
In the present political climate, an adroit presidential candidate is defined by his or her ability to stretch out towards uncharted political waters (i.e. independents) while not disenfranchising core voters in the process. A good candidate can dance a political tango with many partners, arousing those in his or her embrace, romancing their partners with sweet nothings, but never making promises that may be tantamount to infidelity to the one that brought them there.
Jump...
McCain is actually quite good at this. In spite of his inability to read a teleprompter; in spite of his inability to speak in complete grammatical sentence, McCain can romance the center without rousing the suspicion of the hard right. He does this with a palpable sense of pragmatism, what he calls straight talk. All we need to do is take a look at the context and content of his speech today to see exactly how skillful and formidable John McCain will be as the republican presidential nominee.
The speech today was in Los Angeles, which makes one think he is making a play at southern California and marks the beginning of his tacking towards the center. This speech comes while the Dems are still clawing at one another. This speech comes on the heels of what the media is presenting as mixed news about Iraq (surge working, but cease-fire breaking down). There is no better time and place to position oneself as a foreign policy centrist: in front of a California audience, he will receive no Democratic challenges (there is a vaccum in the center), and people have a lot of doubts and questions about the future of our foreign policies. McCain took advantage.
McCain’s foreign affairs speech tried to weave together a narrative for the future of American foreign policy through overarching platitudes and pseudo-concrete initiatives. The speech was framed by a call for America leadership abroad and the reclaiming of American moral authority in the geo-political sphere.
To meet this challenge requires understanding the world we live in, and the central role the United States must play in shaping it for the future. The United States must lead in the 21st century... We must be strong politically, economically, and militarily. But we must also lead by attracting others to our cause, by demonstrating once again the virtues of freedom and democracy, by defending the rules of international civilized society and by creating the new international institutions necessary to advance the peace and freedoms we cherish. Perhaps above all, leadership in today's world means accepting and fulfilling our responsibilities as a great nation.
We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to. We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact -- a League of Democracies -- that can harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests. At the heart of this new compact must be mutual respect and trust...
Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed.
We need to listen--WE NEED TO LISTEN--to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies,...When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them.
This sounds good to the moderate ear. Who could disagree? Isn’t everyone a little tired of unilateral hasty actions abroad? You see, John McCain is not Bush part deux! He is just like us sensible moderates and independents. He is not John Wayne with the red button. No, this is global diplomat McCain, an American Nelson Mandela or Sergio Vieira de Mello. In front of this Californian audience, in front of the American people riddled with doubt about what we are to do in Iraq, McCain said "I feel your pain" and "I share your hopes, values and dreams". Rule #1 in political speechcraft: make your audience think you are one of them. Check.
But what does John McCain mean by political leadership and moral authority? He deftly put out some more bait for the moderate.
McCain on Torture:
We can't torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured. I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.
McCain on the environment:
We need to be good stewards of our planet and join with other nations to help preserve our common home. The risks of global warming have no borders. We and the other nations of the world must get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand off a much-diminished world to our grandchildren.
McCain on Latin America:
Relations with our southern neighbors must be governed by mutual respect, not by an imperial impulse or by anti-American demagoguery...The promise of North, Central, and South American life is too great for that.
McCain on nuclear nonproliferation:
We should work to reduce nuclear arsenals all around the world, starting with our own. Forty years ago, the five declared nuclear powers came together in support of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and pledged to end the arms race and move toward nuclear disarmament. The time has come to renew that commitment. We do not need all the weapons currently in our arsenal. The United States should lead a global effort at nuclear disarmament consistent with our vital interests and the cause of peace.
Never mind the fact that after decades in the senate, McCain has a record ten miles long that proves he is in no way in support of these positions. But what do all these issues have in common? Aside from some lunatics on the far right, torture, nuclear nonproliferation, equable relations with Latin America, and the environment are political head nodding talking points. They are the partner that you like to have a good time with on the dance floor but would never take back to your family and say you’re getting married to: everyone agrees with them but nobody commits to them. Notice that McCain gives absolutely zero concrete descriptions to these pronouncements. They are political fluff designed to get that moderate head bouncing up and down. They are political suggestions to the moderate that stand in contradictions to McCain’s hardline foreign policy growling and potbanging. You see, this McCain guy isn’t all bad. Rule #2 in speechcraft: get the audience you want to be agreeing with you agreeing with you. Check!
At this point McCain has built up some momentum. He has people agreeing with him. He has received a few applauses. While he has not really said anything we can put our hands on, he has engendered some political good will, which makes the thunder of this speech’s crescendo have a open and listening ear. He has mollified the audience, and now he swings for the fences.
We also need to build the international structures for a durable peace in
which the radical extremists are gradually eclipsed by the more powerful forces of freedom and tolerance. Our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are critical in this respect and cannot be viewed in isolation from our broader strategy. In the troubled and often dangerous region they occupy, these two nations [Iraq and Afghanistan] can either be sources of extremism and instability or they can in time become pillars of stability, tolerance, and democracy.
Well, John I don’t like extremists either, but what should we do?
But neither can we pretend the status quo [in the Middle East] is sustainable, stable, or in our interests. Change is occurring whether we want it or not. The only question for us is whether we shape this change in ways that benefit humanity or let our enemies seize it for their hateful purposes. We must help expand the power and reach of freedom, using all our many strengths as a free people... It is the democracies of the world that will provide the pillars upon which we can and must build an enduring peace.
"We" are to change it, Mr. McCain. Who is we? Just the USA? Are you talking about unilateral action? What do you mean? How are we to "expand the power and reach of freedom"?
If you look at the great arc that extends from the Middle East through Central Asia and the Asian subcontinent all the way to Southeast Asia, you can see those pillars of democracy stretching across the entire expanse, from Turkey and Israel to India and Indonesia. Iraq and Afghanistan lie at the heart of that region. And whether they eventually become stable democracies themselves, or are allowed to sink back into chaos and extremism, will determine not only the fate of that critical part of the world, but our fate, as well.
So we are to create a world-order of democracies.... Surely you are not talking about nation building according to the Bush-doctrine on a global scale. Seriously, John.....
That is the broad strategic perspective through which to view our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many people ask, how should we define success? Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is the establishment of peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic states that pose no threat to neighbors and contribute to the defeat of terrorists.
That’s right, Mr. Moderate. John McCain just pissed in your moderate cereal. He just slipped a neocon mickey into your independent cocktail. In spite of all the talk about the global community, John McCain is promoting neoconservative talking points: the prostelyzation of democracy, nation building, and open markets. And if you want to what he means by democracy, he means free markets. He means free trade. Bush round three, anyone?
What John McCain did in the close of this speech is drop the reality of his neoconservative positions in the guise of moderate pragmatism. On the one hand he is for sensible cooperation with the international world, and in the same speech he begins to couch the fate of our nation and world community on the success of the neoconservative agenda. That is, he got the moderate audience agreeing with him about some vague positions, and then he turned to channel that agreement by drawing a fallacious connections to neoconservative policies. If Mr. Moderate agrees with me about my vision of America’s global leadership, then he or she should agree with me about the spread of free market economies. This is a skillful move. Rule #3 in speechcraft: hide the true premises and presuppositions of your positions in the intuitions and ignorance of your audience; make your position their position through a shell game if the truth is not available to you. Check!
We must gear up for this fight. McCain will play the pragmatist persona shell game. He will tact toward the center with yes-man talking points, while simultaneously endorsing the very continuation of the neoconservative foreign policies that have been so calamitous. This is going to be a hard campaign; McCain must be shown for the fraud that he is.