hilzoy

by hilzoy

Here’s a YouTube showing John McCain’s shifting stands on whether he favors privatizing Social Security.

In 2004, McCain said: “Without privatization, I don’t see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits.”

Yesterday:

“My friends, I do not and will not privatize Social Security. It is a government program, and it’s necessary, but it’s broken, and we got to tell the American people that we’ve got to fix it, and we’ve got to sit down together the way that Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill did back in 1983 and fix Social Security. But my friends, I will not privatize Social Security, and it’s not true when I’m accused of that. But I would like for younger workers — younger workers only — to have an opportunity to take a few of their tax dollars — a few of theirs — and maybe put it into an account with their name on it.”

As Matt Yglesias says:

“In short, he stridently denies that he wants to favor privatizing Social Security. He just favors policies that are the same as the policies that were called “privatizing Social Security” before the GOP found out that privatizing Social Security is unpopular.”

But there’s more wrong with what McCain said than this sort of inconsistency. [UPDATE: “This sort of inconsistency” being not just the inconsistency between his past and present positions — people get to change their minds — but between his claim that he does not favor privatization and his claim that he favors, well, what everyone normally calls privatization. END UPDATE]

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by hilzoy

Stunning:

“MATT LAUER: “If it’s working Senator, do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?”

SEN. MCCAIN: “No, but that’s not too important. What’s important is the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea, Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine. American casualties and the ability to withdraw; we will be able to withdraw. General Petraeus is going to tell us in July when he thinks we are. But the key to it is that we don’t want any more Americans in harm’s way.”

The McCain campaign says: “John McCain was asked if he had a “better estimate” for a timeline for withdrawal. As John McCain has always said, that is not as important as conditions on the ground and the recommendations of commanders in the field.” But, as Greg Sargent notes, McCain did not in fact say that when the troops come home was less important than something else; he said it was not too important, period.

Several thoughts: First, my initial reaction to this was fury. There are men and women over in Iraq, in the middle of nowhere, counting the days until they come home. There are families who jump out of their skins every time the doorbell rings. There are spouses trying to keep their marriages together while they’re thousands of miles apart, soldiers wondering whether anyone will really understand what they’ve been through and kids growing up without knowing one of their parents. How could anyone say it doesn’t matter when they come home?

Of course, I’m sure McCain didn’t mean it that way. But this only goes so far. Suppose, by analogy, that I were giving a talk at a company that had announced a big wave of layoffs, and that was rumored to be preparing more; and I said: you know, it really doesn’t matter who gets fired and who doesn’t. Suppose further that I didn’t mean to be cruel: I was talking about macroeconomics, and from that point of view, the identities of people who get laid off are indeed irrelevant. That would show that I was not intentionally hurtful. But it would not begin to show that I wasn’t callous or thoughtless. The best explanation of my remarks is also the best explanation of McCain’s: namely, that I just wasn’t thinking about how they might sound to some of the people most obviously affected by them. Those people just sort of slipped my mind.

As Brandon Friedman says:

“What do the troops in theater think of a statement like that? What does the young sergeant on the 14th month of his third tour think when John McCain says it’s “not too important” when we come home? In fact, this kind of talk is devastating to the morale of the troops. And this type of careless, flippant remark demonstrates unmistakably that McCain clearly has no idea what it’s like to serve on repeated deployments. While he suffered much in his own war, he can neither empathize with, nor relate to today’s troops in Iraq.”

Nor with their families and friends. The fact that it’s a lack of empathy, not deliberate cruelty, is not much comfort.

Second, even taking McCain’s comments strictly on their own terms, they make no sense at all.

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by hilzoy

I was reading blogs late this afternoon when I found a post by Steve Benen asking: why is John McCain still going on about a gas tax holiday? After explaining again why it’s a gimmick that would do nothing to help actual consumers, Steve wrote:

“When pondering why on earth McCain would continue to push obvious nonsense about an important issue, the answer came to me: it’s because he has nothing else to say.

I went to his website to check on his energy policy. On his home page, there’s plenty about golf gear, but nothing about energy or gas prices. Eventually, after digging around for a while, I found this:

John McCain Will Help Americans Hurting From High Gasoline And Food Costs. Americans need relief right now from high gas prices. John McCain will act immediately to reduce the pain of high gas prices.

That’s not an excerpt of a longer position paper, that’s the entire text of McCain’s position on gas prices. He’ll “act immediately.” How? No one knows. With what kind of policy? It’s a total mystery. (In contrast, Obama has a detailed policy page on oil and energy.)”

A bit later, I ran across a post at AmericaBlog titled “Why doesn’t McCain have a national energy strategy?” With gas prices headed through the roof, I thought: hmm, maybe I should check this out. So I did.

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