Posted on 07/11/2006 11:35:49 AM PDT by SDGOP
Esquire Puts One Of Their Own On The Cover -- McCain
mccain2.JPG Sen. John McCain is the subject of a very positive yet appropriately elegiac profile in the coming issue of Esquire. Written by Chris Jones , it's slated for the cover.
The thesis: McCain is worried about the country he loves. And he's running for president, certainly for the last time, to save it. And because of who he is -- because of his iconoclasm, his war experiences, his conviction – “you’re inclined to believe him and to believe that he’s correct.”
Esquire is an upscale, un-conservative gentleman's magazine. The title is very provocative: "One Of Us."
There's also a side bar about McCain's chief political adviser, John Weaver.
Here are two, somewhat out-of-context choice cuts from the profile, just to give its flavor.
McCain: "People always ask me if I'm still mad about what happened in 2000. What in the world is the point of being mad at something that happened six years ago? Did I like it? No. Was I angry at the time? Yes. Did I spend ten wonderful days after I lost feeling sorry for myself? Yes. There's nothing better than feeling sorry for yourself. But there's no point to it, either. I mean, how would it sound if I said, 'Dear citizens of Arizona: I'd like to run for reelection and represent you in the United States Senate. By the way, I'm still pissed off over South Carolina, so I'm sure you'll understand when I spend a lot of my time getting even.' It's over."
McCain: "I understand the frustrations a lot of Republicans feel. We're not representing their hopes and dreams and aspirations. We worry about Ms. Schiavo before we worry about balancing the budget. We're going to take up this Family Marriage Amendment again. Why? The Republicans will vote one way, and the Democrats will vote another, and everybody knows it! It's pointless. I've never seen Washington as polarized as it is today."
McCain: "I would never say this publicly, but some of these talk-show hosts -- and I'm not saying they should be taken off the air; they have the right to do what they want to do -- I don't think they're good for America."
McCain: "I urge my friends who complain about the influence of the religious Right, get out there and get busy. That's what they do! Now, if we believe in the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, the big-tent party, then we have to get out there and show that. The fact is, some of us have sat idly by while those very active people have basically set the agenda for our party. I get attacked everyday because I'm working with Ted Kennedy. How can I work with Kennedy? Because I want to get something done."
More excerpts after the jump.
For weeks, McCain has plugged the immigration-reform package that he put together with Ted Kennedy and that will be voted on in the Senate next week. He has been attacked for creating a path to what he calls "earned citizenship" -- his critics call amnesty -- but now it's his turn to go on the offensive. McCain: "Are we a xenophobic, nativist country? Everybody in this room has an ancestor who came here for the same reason these people came here." Taking sips from their glasses of white win, many of those standing next to the piano [McCain is at a fundraiser in Darien, CT] nod, suddenly one with the Mexicans."
McCain: "I think the biggest mistake we could make is to underestimate Hillary Clinton. She's smart and she's tough. She's very disciplined in all ways -- unlike her husband -- and I think she's formidable. Plus, she already has $20 million in the bank. If we don't get our act together..."
He also believes that time is running out, not because he is growing old -- or not just because he is growing old -- but because our politics and even our sense of common identity have degenerated so quickly. The fact is, John McCain believes we are the ones who need saving, not him. Even with his audience's prodding, he refuses to speak ill of Mrs. Clinton. But in his artful, season way, McCain has given his audience his considered sales pitch for his brand of hawkish, no-bullshit conservatism, marbled with just enough compassion and reason and bipartisanship to set him apart from other Republican breast beaters. Tonight in Connecticut, McCain is of Connecticut. Tomorrow he will be of Delaware, and on Sunday he will be of Maine.
[On a charter plane ....]
"And as usual, there is an odd intimacy among the small group on board, often no more than a couple of longtime aides like Weaver. They share the newspaper, a couple of Heinekens, small talk. Tonight, shortly before touchdown, McCain becomes aware that his hair is standing up. "John," he says to [chief political adviser John Weaver, "I think my hair is out of place." He announces this out loud because he cannot lift his arms above his shoulders. Weaver, casually dressed and a soft-spoken Texas gentleman, reaches across the top of McCain's head, smoothing it. There is a tenderness in the gesture, as there is whenever Weaver straightens McCain's collar or brushes the lint from his jacket. There is tenderness, but there is also a kind of sadness."
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Is John McCain a Crook?
Chris Suellentrop
The controversial George W. Bush-sponsored poll in South Carolina mentioned John McCain's role in the so-called Keating Five scandal, and McCain says his involvement in the scandal "will probably be on my tombstone." What exactly did McCain do?
In early 1987, at the beginning of his first Senate term, McCain attended two meetings with federal banking regulators to discuss an investigation into Lincoln Savings and Loan, an Irvine, Calif., thrift owned by Arizona developer Charles Keating. Federal auditors were investigating Keating's banking practices, and Keating, fearful that the government would seize his S&L, sought intervention from a number of U.S. senators.
At Keating's behest, four senators--McCain and Democrats Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, Alan Cranston of California, and John Glenn of Ohio--met with Ed Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, on April 2. Those four senators and Sen. Don Riegle, D-Mich., attended a second meeting at Keating's behest on April 9 with bank regulators in San Francisco.
Regulators did not seize Lincoln Savings and Loan until two years later. The Lincoln bailout cost taxpayers $2.6 billion, making it the biggest of the S&L scandals. In addition, 17,000 Lincoln investors lost $190 million.
In November 1990, the Senate Ethics Committee launched an investigation into the meetings between the senators and the regulators. McCain, Cranston, DeConcini, Glenn, and Riegle became known as the Keating Five.
(Keating himself was convicted in January 1993 of 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud and served more than four years in prison before his conviction was overturned. Last year, he pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and was sentenced to time served.)
McCain defended his attendance at the meetings by saying Keating was a constituent and that Keating's development company, American Continental Corporation, was a major Arizona employer. McCain said he wanted to know only whether Keating was being treated fairly and that he had not tried to influence the regulators. At the second meeting, McCain told the regulators, "I wouldn't want any special favors for them," and "I don't want any part of our conversation to be improper."
But Keating was more than a constituent to McCain--he was a longtime friend and associate. McCain met Keating in 1981 at a Navy League dinner in Arizona where McCain was the speaker. Keating was a former naval aviator himself, and the two men became friends. Keating raised money for McCain's two congressional campaigns in 1982 and 1984, and for McCain's 1986 Senate bid. By 1987, McCain campaigns had received $112,000 from Keating, his relatives, and his employees--the most received by any of the Keating Five. (Keating raised a total of $300,000 for the five senators.)
After McCain's election to the House in 1982, he and his family made at least nine trips at Keating's expense, three of which were to Keating's Bahamas retreat. McCain did not disclose the trips (as he was required to under House rules) until the scandal broke in 1989. At that point, he paid Keating $13,433 for the flights.
And in April 1986, one year before the meeting with the regulators, McCain's wife, Cindy, and her father invested $359,100 in a Keating strip mall.
The Senate Ethics Committee probe of the Keating Five began in November 1990, and committee Special Counsel Robert Bennett recommended that McCain and Glenn be dropped from the investigation. They were not. McCain believes Democrats on the committee blocked Bennett's recommendation because he was the lone Keating Five Republican.
In February 1991, the Senate Ethics Committee found McCain and Glenn to be the least blameworthy of the five senators. (McCain and Glenn attended the meetings but did nothing else to influence the regulators.) McCain was guilty of nothing more than "poor judgment," the committee said, and declared his actions were not "improper nor attended with gross negligence." McCain considered the committee's judgment to be "full exoneration," and he contributed $112,000 (the amount raised for him by Keating) to the U.S. Treasury.
I surely do.
He's always angry; along with his brothers, Dean and Murtha
"I would never say this publicly"????
It's an interview in a national magazine, you idiot!
"McCain: "I would never say this publicly, but some of these talk-show hosts -- and I'm not saying they should be taken off the air; they have the right to do what they want to do -- I don't think they're good for America."
Oh really McLame....you want to censor free speech and ideas now...especially when we debate your foolish positions....
Looking foward to the true conservative base dumping this RINO in 08 once and for all. Go retire McLame.
There is no "Good Advice" that could possibly come from Howard Stern the Sleeze.
And the marbles in the overhead. Now let's scoop out 12 spoons of sand, to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that ice cream was stolen. I'm using pure cold methodical logic to prove the ice cream was stolen. BTW, I did not cut the tow line.
Well, this will really swing the election one way or the other, probably an overall effect of, say, ten votes more or less. Until GQ and Men's Health weigh in most folks will still be undecided, but personally, I'm waiting for the Maxim interview to make up my mind.
McCain and his chief political strategist, John Weaver, have spent much of the past year courting key members of the Bush campaign team.
Weaver characterized McCain’s relationship with President Bush as "an evolving one," gradually becoming a "friendly relationship." He said McCain’s relationship with Kerry is "that they are genuine friends."
One McCain volunteer turned to me (the 'reporter') while watching the results and said, “You might as well start calling him President Al Gore,” signaling that Bush’s win came on the strength of the religious right.
Analysts say McCain wooing religious right
Senator to address Falwell's college
McCain's campaign manager, John Weaver said:
“The one thing I admire about Grover (Norquist) is how hard he works to make himself relevant. But he’s not relevant. He never has been and never will be. He should go pick on some fourth-graders.”
Whew...
I think the shrinks call this projection.
Regards,
TS
Esquire? Is that still around?
Me neither.
Lol, sad but true.
Smug b*st*rd
I'm in AZ, I really don't like McCain at all, but I don't use Charlie Keating as a bludgeon on him because I don't think he did anything wrong. It was reasonable to know Keating, and be friends at that time. Keating was the primary force behind conservative AZ politics in the mid '80's, so if you were a pol, you had to know him.
IOW, McCain did the right thing by sticking up for a very influential constituent, and did the right thing again when he told Keating to stick it when the going got criminal.
McCain's the biggest liberal in the GOP. Hopefully, this will anger more conservatives on the "religious right." He's a danger to our freedom.
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