John McCain’s wingman, Mark Salter, has been credited with turning McCain’s life into literature and making a pile of dough off of their book collaborations. As one commentator put it, “I sometimes joke that John McCain is really Mark Salter.”
Salter was naturally drawn to a reexamination of McCain’s “martial heritage,” as the senator put it in Meridian. The son of a World War II and Korea veteran, Salter grew up playing with toy soldiers and reading Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos comic books.
Over the last couple of weeks, Salter returned to the land of fantasy and wrote a speech which McCain delivered yesterday. By using the rhetorical device of imagining what the fifth year of a McCain presidency would be like, Salter avoided any of the pesky “fact-checking” that has bedeviled him in the past and avoided any mention of the current problems of the Republican Party. In this imaginary world we would be out of Iraq and Iraq would be a stable democracy. Americans would have health care and great education. Taxes would be lower, social security would be fixed, our borders would be secure and we would be well on our way to solving global warming. As the Times noted,McCain “offered no proposals for how he would achieve that vision.”
Mr. McCain took issue when a reporter said the candidate had asked everyone to go along on a “magic carpet ride” to 2013. “I don’t think it has anything to do with fantasy,” Mr. McCain said pointedly. “I think it has everything to do with setting goals and achieving.”
The very nerve of a reporter having the audacity to question this Magical Mystery Tour of 2013!
7 responses so far ↓
Jamie Holts // May 16, 2008 at 8:35 am |
Great post. I will read your posts frequently. Added you to the RSS reader.
BobbyG // May 16, 2008 at 9:25 am |
What crap!
Yeah, and by 2013 I’ll be better looking and taller and tomahawk-dunking a basketball at age 67.
JR // May 16, 2008 at 9:42 am |
I want some of what he’s on!!!
STS // May 16, 2008 at 10:57 am |
McCain is insane.
Jon, others,
Any comment on the Governator’s big lotto-bonds budget “balancing” bonanza?
Rick Turner // May 16, 2008 at 1:57 pm |
Arnold stepped in a dog poo pile with that one. Unfortunately, the gorilla in the room is called “defined benefits retirement funds.” Major sacred cow for government workers…major expense for tax payers.
I don’t think that government workers should get to retire any sooner than the rest of us poor saps who might be Socially Secure someday…66 for real retirement, 70 for full benefits. So what if they worked for the public good? Why does that make them any more special than anyone else in the private sector? They had damned good jobs are were nearly immune to being fired.
Morgan Warstler // May 16, 2008 at 5:35 pm |
Rick, I love this side of you, you should lift your skirt more often… we’d get along grandly.
Bill Kristol Smokes Opium « Jon Taplin’s Blog // May 19, 2008 at 8:30 am |
[...] 19, 2008 · No Comments The New York Times designated neo-con was inspired by John McCain’s fantasy speech last week, to do a bit of his own dreamy ruminations on the November election. He cites three pieces [...]