Five Threatening Character Flaws of John McCain

by Tom H. Hastings

600 words

There seems to be some confusion amongst the pundits about who ‘won’ the first presidential debate on September 26. Winning a debate was once about demonstrating intellectual command over the facts and logic surrounding an issue. Americans are trained to look past the depth of arguments, however, to the shallow ad hominem jabs, and the talking heads reinforced that once again. So, all right. In an attempt to look toward actual, predictable effects of a McCain victory, we key off the debate to five notches in the key of catastrophe being cut and buffed by McCain.

One: McCain is ossified. Almost before he finished his second sentence, John McCain was saying, ‘Again…,’ as though he had no fresh thoughts beyond his rote response.

Two: McCain is reckless. He tut-tutted Obama about the latter’s measured if militaristic statement that if he were president and received actionable intelligence about bin Laden operating at a specific location in the tribal areas of Northwest Pakistan, he would attack al-Qa’ida. “You don’t say that out loud,” said McCain, as though he would do the same thing, but just make it a surprise to Pakistanis. Obama explained and then noted that it was odd to hear such criticism from someone who sang songs about bombing Iran and discussed the “extinction” of North Korea.… (for your exclusive consideration of the original full text, be the first to contact us: PeaceVoiceDirector@gmail.com)

Tom H. Hastings (pcwtom@gmail.com) teaches in the MA/MS Conflict Resolution program at Portland State University.