Our Right And His Wrongs: "Question: Were McCain to take the presidential oath, what would he mean?Congress shall make no law, so an executive order should do it. I mean, there is recent precedent.
In his words to Imus, note the obvious disparagement he communicates by putting verbal quotation marks around 'First Amendment rights.' Those nuisances.
Then ponder his implicit promise to 'complete the job' of cleansing Washington of corruption, as McCain understands that. Unfortunately, although McCain is loquacious about corruption, he is too busy deploring it to define it. Mr. Straight Talk is rarely reticent about anything , but he is remarkably so about specifics: He says corruption is pandemic among incumbent politicians, yet he has never identified any corrupt fellow senator.
Anyway, he vows to 'complete the job' of extirpating corruption, regardless of the cost to freedom of speech. Regardless, that is, of how much more the government must supervise political advocacy. President McCain would, it is reasonable to assume, favor increasingly stringent limits on what can be contributed to, or spent by , campaigns. Furthermore, McCain seems to regard unregulated political speech as an inherent invitation to corruption. And he seems to believe that anything done in the name of 'leveling the playing field' for political competition is immune from First Amendment challenges."
Which highlights the stark contradiction in McCain's doctrine and the media's applause of it. He and they assume, simultaneously, the following two propositions:I find him dangerous for quite a few reasons. At this point he just wants the power, the idealism is gone. Bruised and battered he will say and do anything to get elected.
Proof that incumbent politicians are highly susceptible to corruption is the fact that the government they control is shot through with it. Yet that government should be regarded as a disinterested arbiter, untainted by politics and therefore qualified to regulate the content, quantity and timing of speech in campaigns that determine who controls the government. In the language of McCain's Imus appearance, the government is very much not "clean," but it is so clean it can be trusted to regulate speech about itself.
McCain hopes that in 2008 pro-life Republicans will remember his pro-life record. But they will know that, regarding presidents and abortion, what matters are Supreme Court nominees. McCain favors judges who think the Constitution is so radically elastic that government regulation of speech about itself is compatible with the First Amendment. So Republican primary voters will wonder: Can President McCain be counted on to nominate justices who would correct such constitutional elasticities as the court's discovery of a virtually unlimited right -- one unnoticed between 1787 and 1973 -- to abortion?
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