John McCain is back in the news, trying to rehabilitate his rep after his disastrous campaign, and was on Larry King last night bringing the funny:
MCCAIN: No. I think the president and I established a relationship of respect both in the Senate and during the campaign. There were rough times in the campaign. You know, you’ve observed so many of them. But at the same time, I think underlying the whole campaign was an environment of respect, which then allows you to — to come together and work for the good of the country.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T:
I guess McCain thinks “THAT ONE” defines respect differently from the rest of us. You know those celebrities.
DaveB
Maybe one day McCain will apppear on a show and say something honest like:
I wanted to be president so much I was willing to do anything, even name a bubblehead as my VP. Let’s just pretend it never happened.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
I think the president and I established a relationship of respect both in the Senate and during the campaign.
Out of context, it sounds like he’s talking about Bush.
Maybe that’s it.
Donna
You know, he is quite elderly — it very well could be that he’s thinking of Bush. Someone should gently remind him that it’s 2009 and "that one" was just sworn in.
DougJ
I’m about to give you all my money, and all I’m asking in return honey…
Kind of fitting in this case, given that this is about McCain supporting the stimulus, etc.
eric k
All in all though it is Obama’s interest to let McCain pretend all he wants to burnish his self image. the republicans are throwing McCain under a bus and he already does’t like them much anyway. A McCain pissed off at his party can end up with a very interesting voting pattern (see 2001-2002)
sgwhiteinfla
Off topic, anybody else notice that most of the White House correspondents actually were the ones covering McCain during the campaign? Scherer, JMart, Tapper, Mr Ed just to name a few.
As for McCain, why should he change and start telling the truth now when lies have gotten him this far?
Zifnab
But over the top was a nice thick coat of demagoguery and race-baiting. Who does he think he’s fooling? Paris Hilton was cutting joke ads against him at the height of the campaign. Lynch mob and Sarah Palin Rally were virtually synonymous. "Pales around with terrorists" was the phrase of the week for nearly three months straight.
The most brazen bank robbers in the world know when to lay low and shut up after a bad heist. And yet here McCain is, practically fellating the mic with his bullshit. He’s got absolutely gianormous balls for an old guy.
Shawn in ShowMe
You gotta understand, when McCain called his own wife a c**t in public, it was in the best sense of the word. Up is down. Ignorance is strength.
Mazacote Yorquest
Look, now is the time to be a John McCain fan. It’s clear he’s embarrassed by his campaign, and already he’s started to take shots at this party. He has no incentive whatsoever to remain loyal solely to the GOP. He knows he fucked up with Palin, and Obama has smoothly offered to restore his bipartisan image.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Perhaps what McCain means is that he respected what a formidable campaign Obama was running, and thus he knew that nothing less than a ginormous slop bucket of lies would suffice if he (McCain) was to have any chance of winning.
Joshua Norton
Gag. That’s like Noah saying "it looks like it might rain a little".
Elvis Elvisberg
You’re right, Mazacote, that it’s in keeping with Obama’s character that he’s helping to rehabilitate McCain.
Leave that to Obama.
I think I speak for all the blogosphere when I say, fuck John McCain for running a George Wallace campaign.
The Other Steve
McCain was generally respectful.
The people around McCain were not.
This is evidence of McCain’s McMaverick Leadership… the inability to control people around him.
sgwhiteinfla
Yeah McCain was generally respectful, except when he was accusing Obama of socialist tendencies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh1RHr-z-nw
cleek
shit, i’d almost forgotten about that loser.
can’t he just ride off into the sunset or something?
BDeevDad
Yeah, they sowed respect and good will towards all.
Zifnab
@Mazacote Yorquest:
And that’s swell. For him. But I’m not really interested in being swooned by the McMaverick image again, like I was back in 2000. So if he wants to have a crisis of conscience (again) and turn over (another) new leaf, by all means I’m all for it. But if he hands me a shit sandwich, don’t expect me to eat it.
Eclectablog
There were two periods of time when you can honestly say John McCain was respectful toward Barack Obama:
1. Before the General Election campaign.
2. After the General Election campaign.
During? Ehhhh…not so much.
Tom Hilton
Bingo: the way to McCain’s heart is through his vanity. A year ago, McCain needed to kiss up to the wingnuttiest people in his party; now, all the incentives are in the opposite direction. A little ego-feeding by the President of the Free World can go a long way toward making McCain a useful member of society again.
Nor am I; I think we should never be sentimental about McCain. At the same time, we shouldn’t let our anger or contempt toward him get in the way of considering his potential usefulness.
A la lanterne les aristos!
McWho?
Will Danz
As usual, McCain is doing his backpedaling schtick: a combination of lying, groveling, shameless spin, and his firm (and correct) belief that the media will never point out anything that makes him uncomfortable.
Zuzu's Petals
The words "He would rather lose a war than a campaign" came out of McCain’s mouth. More than once. Then he defended them.
He defended an ad that said Obama wanted to teach sex to kindergartners. That ad and others that accused Obama of palling around with terrorists, having socialist tendencies, etc. all ended with John McCain saying he approved them.
John McCain whipped crowds into a frenzy by questioning Obama’s patriotism and very identity, and refused to back down even when it became apparent Obama’s personal safety was being affected.
I just fail to see how this equates to McCain being generally respectful toward Obama.
JL
The Washington Post had a nice article about McCain today trying to help him regain his status. My favorite paragraph was this…
lol
Zifnab
Well, Obama did eventually win. So clearly McCain didn’t delve into dirty politics as deeply as he could have. And if Obama had lost, it would simply prove that the Democrats were a bunch of pasty faced losers who couldn’t handle real politics.
So, in short, McCain was respectful to Obama by losing.
JenJen
Yup.
And Meghan McCain has a thoroughly nauseating piece up on The Daily Beast (We Employ Unemployable Republicans! Apply Within!), a video interview with Mark McKinnon called "Why’d You Ditch My Dad."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-23/whyd-you-ditch-my-dad
I’m sure everyone will be thrilled to read that Mark thinks liking Obama will soon be "uncool," that Meghan feels Obama won because young people became "anti-establishment," and…. my personal favorite… wait for it…. she only watched the Inauguration to see what Michelle Obama was wearing because of her awesome taste in fashion. (WTF WTF WTF?)
Of course, I think it’s fine for Meghan to support her father, of course she should, and what daughter wouldn’t, but dispensing with political analysis might be something she’d like to reconsider. I mean, wow, talk about disconnected fuck-ups. With this kind of talk, it’s going to be a long walk in the wilderness for these people. Also, of course, no mention from Meghan about that Inauguration Eve Dinner the Obamas put on for her father.
(EDIT: Ummm, I had nothing to do with the way that Daily Beast link displayed. Although it kinda is teh funny.)
bncthor
No matter what Senator McCain says on a TV program, he was not respectful toward President Obama during the campaign.
Joshua Norton
OK. I’m officially swooning for the first time in 2 years – since this last election cycle started.
Challenged by one Republican senator over the contents of the package, the new president, according to participants, replied: “I won.”
Suck. On. That.
The Moar You Know
Ahhh, John…how can we miss you if you won’t go away?
Led Zep
McCain lost precisely because he ran Al Gore’s 2000 campaign oh-we-can’t-offend-anyone playbook. He barely touched Obama. If McCain had ran an aggressive campaign against Obama, McCain would be in the White House right now.
You guys are so used to throwing rocks at Bush, that the most tiny criticism against your guy is "disrespectful". Gonna be a long four years for you.
The Grand Panjandrum
Obama is way ahead of most of the mental midgets in the House and Senate. That dinner to honor McCain was a master stroke. McCain isn’t going to go along with everything Obama wants done, but he will certainly put aside the BS party line to get things done.
BTW I’m watching MSNBC and I just want to know where the hell they find all these babes? Man, I should have gone to journalism school because we didn’t have quite as many in the math department.
I say let bygones be bygones. Besides, R-E-S-P-E-C-T is just another reminder whose inauguration Aretha sang at.
Obama has been taking shots at the real culprits: the former Cheerleader and his gang of War Criminals.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Led Zep: It’s been a long time since YOU rock n’ rolled, eh?
oh really
McCain knows how the system works.
He felt free to be a lying scumbag during the campaign, because he knows that all he has to do now is pretend he was respectful and everyone will say, "Oh, that maverick John McCain, he’s such a great guy."
Well, he’s not a great guy, but we can always expect people to run campaigns like McCain’s, because there is no price to pay (except in his incompetent case — defeat!) afterward.
If he had won in November, all the slime would have been instantly forgotten and we would be expected to "respect" him because the American people had spoken and he was the president.
Effem.
demimondian
@Led Zep: Meh. 4/10.
You have not embraced the spoof; your midiclonitrons are poorly reproduced.
john
I walked into a room with the show on, heard him say he had established a relationship of respect with the president, and DID think he was talking about BUSH. I left and just found out he was talking about obama!
dmsilev
@JenJen:
If memory serves, Rudy’s kids rather pointedly avoided even endorsing him, never mind campaigning for him. Something about how he publicly humiliated and tossed their mother out in favor of Wife #3.
The thought of a GOP ticket consisting of Rudy and Sarah is an awesome one. We could call it the "Comedian Employment Act of 2008".
-dms
Redhand
What a lying (or deluded) sack of shit. I mean, seriously, he runs a disgraceful, low-road, character assassination campaign and thinks he did operated in an environment of "respect"?! He must be using the word in the same sense that Tony Soprano would.
Fuck you, McSame. I sure as hell won’t pretend it didn’t happen.
AkaDad
To be fair, it really does take a Maverick™ to be a total douchebag.
JenJen
@dmsilev:
Oh, absolutely. Of course, as you noted, it would seem that Senator McCain’s relationship with Meghan was not as marred as that of Rudy "Put Yer Masks On" Giuliani’s with his own daughter.
Having kids stick up for their parents in the political arena is something that’s always made me a bit queasy. But turning them into GOP Pundits on "The Daily Beast" is something that should nauseate all of us… especially when they sound like they just sucked down a big-ass bowl of WRONG Soup. Employing Meghan McCain in this context amounts to nothing short of Wingut Welfare, honestly (as if Ms. McCain is in dire need of a paycheck at any rate). Heckuva Job, Tina Brown!
PALIN/GIULIANI ’12! Oh please, Lawd!! Oh, please!! Comedy Gold!!
TenguPhule
It finally happened. Spoof and Trolls have become indistinguishable from each other.
GSD
By the way, is Limbaugh getting adult onset hydrocephalia?
Kieth O showed him last night and his head looks ready to burst.
That head looks like it should be floating down 42nd Street on Thanksgiving day held by tethers.
-GSD
gex
@Mazacote Yorquest: I am more and more growing to appreciate how very adult Obama is. Even while thinking of myself as more adult than the wingnuts I dislike, I would have trouble letting bygones be bygones in this situation.
Zuzu's Petals
@Zifnab:
Good point.
I also love how his handlers tried to portray him as so honorable because he refused to use the Wright angle. The fact was he decided not to got there ONLY because he thought it would make HIM look bad.
eric k
To turn back to the serious:
I’ve said since early summer that McCain’s best approach would have been to to recognize that people basically liked Obama, even a big chunck of the people who voted for McCain for various reasons (Pro life, etc) still had generally positive feelings about Obama, there is a reason his approval rating is so high, basically only the Bush dead ender 25% don’t like him. And before he went off the wingnut deepend people liked McCain too.
The Angle he should have taken was "Obama is a great guy, he is the kind of Democrat I can work with, I just don’t think he is ready, in 2016? hell I may vote for him then myself. I look forward to working with him as a leader in the Senate during my term"
The biggest mistake McCain made was not pivoting to an anti Bush campaign as soon as he won the primary, so what if the right wingers complained, heck the best thing he could have hoped for was a floor fight at the convention, it would have burnished his centrist image. Along those lines he should have picked Lieberman.
Given the climate still might not have worked, but certainly would have been better than the camapaign he did run, pretty hard to be worse than a campaign that has a Republican losing Indiana!
feckless
If McCain had named Lieberman VP, and come out against the bailout from the getgo, he’d be president right now.
The "honor" Mr. Pro-torture cloture vote claims to have retained is that he told his campaign from ‘going after Reverend Wright’.
It was honor, not a calculation that
A) the majority is generally sick of the OJ style press slam, and the month Wright was in the spotlight wore it out as an issue. (the only people claiming Wright was ‘concealed’ by the press are insane rightwingers).
B) McCain bringing up Wright would subject McCain’s (and Palin’s) godliness to public scrutiny, and the Adulterer who’s religious supporters blame gays for hurricanes and 9/11 would have lost that fight.
The guy gave information to his captors for medical treatment and then thought he deserved to be president for his sufferings.
He is the exact same person as Bush, a privileged son that did nothing but fail up.
JohnR
C’mon, let’s ease up on poor old John. I suspect that he’s lost the respect of most of the country now, who decided they would rather vote for a Scary Black Christian-hating Terrorist than for him and his Mrs. Hitler bobblehead. He’s not really respected any more, let alone admired, and that must feel like sandpaper undershorts to him.
Mrs. K8
"I think underlying the whole campaign was an environment of respect"
Ladies and Gentlemen —
I believe we’ve been missing the specific tortuous parsing by which Mr. McCain allows himself to believe he is telling the truth here:
When McCain says "the whole campaign">, you will note that he doesn’t state to WHOSE campaign he is referring.
He must, of course, be referring to the OBAMA campaign, which always remained respectful when dealing with that creepy rat, McCain.
This interpretation also allows his following bit to read true: "which then allows you to—to come together and work for the good of the country."
Yes, the tenor of the Obama campaign now allows us to come together to work for the good of the country.
Always remember to run his statements through all the Orwellian linguistic filters first! In that respect, McCain remains a true Republican.
DonnaInMichigan
I will never EVER forgive John McCain for unleashing Sarah Palin and Joe not the plumber on us.
Ever.
Also, too.
AnneLaurie
Among the Media Village Idiots, Tina Brown is Chief Procuress. Giving Meghan McCain a place to publicly exhibit her familial pathology lets her wink’n’grin like Stephen Colbert for the Obama supporters at her cocktail parties, while keeping a back-channel open to the Rethug bitter-enders. In Ms. Brown’s world, political regimes come and go, but the invitation lists for the really *nice* soirees have very little turnover.
"Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? / That’s not my department, says Tina von Brown… "
Zuzu's Petals
@DonnaInMichigan:
One thing about all the Obamamania, it’s at least bumped "Joe" the "Plumber" off the stage for awhile.
Mike in NC
McCain is best summarized as what we in the Navy call a "disgrace to the uniform" with his bottom of the class Annapolis record and subsequent crashing of five airplanes.
Dennis
Bottom line is this: McCain is an old man. He has limited time to rehabilitate his image among historians who will be the ones to describe for future generations how he fitted into this important time in American history.
In othe words, he needs to get down and be Obama’s bitch for the length of this president’s term, or he will most surely be nothing more than an unsavory historical footnote to Obama’s groundbreaking, historic presidency.
I think McCain knows this. I wager McCain becomes Barack’s go-to guy and staunch defender for the next 4 years or more.
54-40 or fight! Bitches!
Hob
@Eclectablog:
Before the campaign? Ha ha. This was McCain in 2006. I understand the letter is supposed to have been ghostwritten, but tell me how a classy, respectful guy lets something like that go out under his name. McCain has always been an asshole, the campaign just made it easier to see.
x76
Bear in mind that most/all politicians are incredibly stupid and self-absorbed and believe whatever smoke their aides have been blowing up their butts the previous fifteen minutes.
They’re programmed like Etch-A-Sketches, which, in McSame’s part may be all too appropriate. He’s a Manchurian Candidate, waiting for a symbol like the Queen of Diamonds to trigger his role. How many times did the KGB chat with John "Songbird" McCain in Hanoi?
A blank slate. Write what you will. He’ll parrot it.