John McCain and I don’t agree on much, I reckon. I think the old man has been a net drag on American politics for a long time.
But I can’t find much to dispute in his take on Sheldon Adelson and Citizens United. (Via TPM):
“[M]uch of Mr. Adelson’s casino profits that go to him come from this casino in Macau,” McCain told Judy Woodruff in an interview that aired Thursday night. “Which says that, obviously, maybe in a roundabout way, foreign money is coming into an American campaign.”
McCain, who once worked with former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) on the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, a.k.a. the McCain-Feingold bill, called the Citizens United decision the Supreme Court’s “most misguided, naive, uninformed, egregious decision” in the 21st century.
“Look, I guarantee you, Judy, there will be scandals,” he said. “There is too much money washing around political campaigns today. And it will take scandals, and then maybe we can have the Supreme Court go back and revisit this issue. Remember, the Supreme Court rules on constitutionality. So just passing another law doesn’t get it. So I’m afraid we’re in for a very bleak period in American politics.”
Unlike Romney — who famously said last summer that “corporations are people” — McCain said he believes that “corporations are not people.”
“That’s why we have different laws that govern corporations than govern individual citizens,” he said. “And so to say that corporations are people, again, flies in the face of all the traditional Supreme Court decisions that we have made — that have been made in the past.”
Put this another way: McCain actually seems to recognize that Mittens is setting up to be the front man for a presidency whose IOUs belong to Adelson’s Israel-first hunger and, as McCain himself points out, that Chinese connection that will surely disappoint those who actually credit Romney’s bluster on confrontation with Beijing. (Not to mention all the other notes that will have to be paid to folks like the Kochs, et al.)
John McCain sees this as “a very bleak period in American politics.”
Grandpa: you’re on to something.
Image: John Singer Sargent, Charles Deering at Brickell Point, Miami, 1917.
LanceThruster
dependablerenegade.com/dependable_renegade/2012/06/sheldon-adelson-at-his-first.html
D0n Camillo
Fair play to him. He’s called this right. The one thing I disagree with is his saying that this flies in the face of all the traditional Supreme Court decisions because it seems to me that the SC has been very pro corporate persondooh for a long time.
kindness
For as much as I think McCain is the post card picture of ‘Get off my lawn you lousy kids!’ he is kinda well grounded which is something you can’t say about the bulk of the Republican party these days.
If only the dude wouldn’t carry the water of the truly crazy…
@D0n Camillo: yea but the Roberts Court has taken this to a whole new level of ignoring precident in order to further right wing laws.
zifnab25
Ask McCain who he is voting for in ’12. Or what justices he’d have nominated of he’d won in ’08. :-p. All hat, no cattle, that one.
amk
@zifnab25: Bingo. Talk is easy, as mittbot sez. If he had voted even once against this party since 2008, he might carry a thimbleful of respect.
dan
Tom, I enjoy your writing. I was surprised by the “Grandpa” remark.
Dice
@zifnab25: All hat & no horse, the way I heard it …
Misterpuff
So McCain is back being all maverick-y, huh?
Better fire up the patio grill and win back our Liberal press corps….
Gus
He’s an old man, probably starting to worry about his legacy. Without McCain-Feingold, what’s he got? Which isn’t to say he doesn’t deserve credit for his continued commitment to campaign finance reform.
burnspbesq
McCain gets this issue. Always has.
My pedantic, lawyerly rant/whine for the day: can we once and for all dispose of this misleading “corporations are people” bullshit and focus on the rights that corporations actually have under the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment (and yes, I know that there is literally no Equal Protection Clause in the Fifth Amendment, but the courts have uniformly and correctly held that the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment has an equal protection component that is co-extensive with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment)?
Tom Levenson
@dan: Sorry if it offends. I still think the Grandpa Abe McCain spoof ads (now removed from Youtube, alas) were the funniest bits I saw through the whole 2008 campaign, and I’ve never been able to think of the senior senator from AZ by any other name since.
I particularly loved the one about fuel efficiency, in which Grandpa A. McC. declared that his car got “six furlongs to the hogshead. And I like it that way!”
amk
@Gus: Heh, he got tundra twit legacy. He will be
rememberedlaughed at for that forever.Todd
Dammit to hell, can we please focus on the fact that a corporation doesn’t exist without government sanction in its creation, and that as a creature of statute, it is inherently regulable.
My view probably grants more leeway to the CU holding as to individuals.
Comrade Bukharin
Adelson is obviously trying to buy himself a war with Iran. Do you want your kids to die for the Sands Hotel Corp?
Punchy
McCain walks this back, declares comments taken out of context, and apologizes to Sheldon. In 12 hours or less. Bet the house on it.
burnspbesq
@Todd:
The thing is, Citizens United isn’t really about the rights of corporations. It’s about the power of Congress. As in “what part of ‘Congress shall make no law’ are people struggling to understand?”
LanceThruster
@amk: Also, too!
Poopyman
@Gus: Well, hopefully he’ll also be remembered for his “work” as part of the Keating Five.
LanceThruster
@Comrade Bukharin: No, but if I was a Rethuglican, I’d have no problem with someone else’s kids dying for the Sands Hotel Corp.
IT’S THE AMMURKHIN WAY!
Gus
@Poopyman: Sadly few people remember that already.
Bill Murray
@burnspbesq: since they should have none, I think your point is moot. Corporations have privileges granted by the people, not rights inherent in their existence. What’s so hard to figure about that.
russell
no shit, sherlock.
youtube.com/watch?v=AYs6aAybNBc
he can say whatever he likes. when he heard his master’s voice say “jump”, he asked “how high” just like the rest of them.
maverick my ass.
Jamie
Having trouble finding it, buy anyone remember McCain’s attempted bitchslap letter to Obama ca. 2005 or so? I can’t remember what it was about, but McCain tried to paint Obama as some lightweight trying to twist the knife on his betters.
I remember thinking about that during the 2008, and thinking that D.C was even more of a murky, deep pool than I thought.