McCain Outsources His Brain

The New York Times did a study of John McCain's closeness to President Bush, and tried super-hard to exonerate him, but couldn't. They had to admit that his stances on the biggest issues facing the country are identical to Bush, and sometimes even at odds with his prior positions. It's pretty easy to figure out why this is. The campaign is run by practically every Republican lobbyist on K Street, and sometime after the primary they sat him down and told him exactly what he would believe and espouse and enact if installed in the White House. And McCain nodded his head and cooed "Anything else, guys?" That's how you have to judge everything out of this guy's mouth. The response to McCain calling for 45 new nuclear reactors has to be "How many lobbyists from the nuclear industry on his staff," as an example.

Problem is, they were sloppy. In addition to wanting their agenda passed starting January 2009, they wanted it immediately. And so he intervened on behalf of Airbus in awarding a lucrative Air Force contract, selling out American workers at Boeing and being so cavalier about it that the GAO ruled the deal was in fact illegal. (McCain lost any hope of winning the state of Washington with this blunder, and there's also a big Boeing facility in Wichita, Kansas, which might get competitive by the time we're done).

And despite the lobbyists swimming around the campaign, McCain found himself last year short on cash. So he flew around on his sugar momma's jet without reimbursing her, and he sold out the campaign finance process and tried to opt out of the public financing system while benefiting from it in collateral loans and ballot access. This isn't a result of financial influence from lobbyists, but it does reflect the ETHOS of a lobbyist.

McCain is now 100% pure lobbyist, without convictions or honor of his own. He's outsourced his own brain.