Just wanted to make sure all of you have seen this, which I first saw yesterday:
John McCain took to the Senate floor on Wednesday to repudiate suggestions by his fellow Republican lawmaker, Michele Bachmann, that the family of a longtime aide to secretary of state Hillary Clinton had ties to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.
McCain praised the work and patriotism of Huma Abedin, a State Department employee who has been a constant presence at Clinton’s side. Without mentioning congresswoman Bachmann by name, McCain described the attacks on Abedin, a Muslim, as an example of ignorance and fear that defames the spirit of the nation.
“Huma represents what is best about America: the daughter of immigrants, who has risen to the highest levels of our government on the basis of her substantial personal merit and her abiding commitment to the American ideals that she embodies so fully.” McCain said. “I am proud to know Huma and to call her my friend.”
Bachmann, a member of the House intelligence committee, made the allegations in a June letter to the state department as well as in a letter Wednesday to fellow Minnesota lawmaker, represenative Keith Ellison, a Democrat…
Please watch the video, if you haven’t already seen it. Watch it all, and let its tone and pacing wash over you.
It’s a testament not only to the respective characters of the speaker and his subject, but a painful reminder of how seldom today we hear such graceful, honorable and high-minded speeches in our hyperpartisan, name-calling public sphere.
It is all the more satisfying to hear my kind of senator so gracefully decry the excesses of a politician who is emblematic of what has happened to his own party.
I’d like to hear someone like John McCain give a speech like this in response to someone like Michele Bachmann every day. It would really bolster my faith in our system.
Interesting footnote: McCain ends by saying “Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.” These are not the days of Daniel Webster. Today, not only are too few senators capable of such a speech as this, most of them won’t even sit and listen to one.
That was the good John McCain talking. I wish he were that reasonable all the time, instead of trying to get us into another war in Syria.
Bachmann is scary.
I liked that he used Madame Secretary’s full name.
Of course, how much did he beget Michelle Bachmann, via his unleashing the Kracken who is Sarah Palin? It is very decent of him to speak up, just as he attempted to rein in the wilder elements of the party against President Obama.
Good for him. Some people are simply compelled to rise to the occasion and be counted.
This speaks well of Senator McCain but it shouldn’t have been necessary. The Bachmann’s of the world should be ashamed of their abhorent behavior.
A career politician speaks and journalists are anxious not only to exalt him, but bury the allegations he dismisses out of hand with no more facts than the accuser.
Yes, McCain’s point was exactly as legitimate as the equanimity with which he endorsed candidate Obama’s
legitimate qualification for POTUS during the ’08 campaign.
For the moment, outstanding facts in both accounts are unavailable. The rush to non-factual judgement the hasty decry is a two-way street in this country, my friends, and better left to what the tides of time manage exhume and due process decides!
This is a case of a gentleman rising to defend someone whose character he has reason to know. He’s telling us that she’s not just somebody with a furrin name that should excite our xenophobia. He’s telling us what he knows about her, and why he respects and admires her, and he’s pointing out how insubstantial the accusations were.
This is what a gentleman must do, when he finds himself in such circumstances. And he did it here with grace and dignity. And unfortunately, a gentleman doing what a gentleman must do, and doing it with grace, is terribly rare today in our political sphere. To start with, we seem to have a gentleman shortage.
Too bad for Juan that McCain’s not a lawyer. He can only condemn him as “a career politician,” an equally arbitrary reason to condemn someone.
Let me tell you what John McCain is. He is a career Naval officer. He was terribly hurt, crippled really, in the heroic performance of his duties in the service of his country. He could have lived a very comfortable life on retirement pay — captains get a nice pension — and combat-related disability pay.
Instead, he has chosen to continue serving his country for more than three additional decades.
I honor him for this, as I do for his previous service. It is not a character flaw, but quite the opposite. If far more people with his sense of honorable service would run for office and win and manage to stay in office, this country would be vastly better off than it is today.
“And unfortunately, a gentleman doing what a gentleman must do, and doing it with grace, is terribly rare today in our political sphere.”
Womens libbers can’t have it both ways.
“Instead, he has chosen to continue serving his country for more than three additional decades.”
Please… he’s become a millionaire (not just through his sugar Momma marriage) thanks to his political career.
He loves being the center of attention (a trait shared by your other faves Graham and Lieberman). He was so wrong on the economy and so responsible for the dumbing down of the political process in America with his Palin selection in 2008 that he should have quit politics in shame afterward. His best days were more than twenty years ago. Since then: just another guy in love with his political office.
You know, if anything makes me just call it all a loss and want to give up — on my country, on politics, on representative democracy, on any hope for humanity — it’s cynicism like that.
I never get to the point of giving up hope, but that kind of relentless negativity brings me closer than anything else. It’s really, truly depressing.
Brad – In my world, it’s stating the facts and not stating fantasy. It’s why Obama put “Hope” and not “Reality” on his campaign posters. It’s like a kid on Christmas morning hoping for a 2-man submarine and getting socks, because that’s what his parents could afford and what he needed.
I agree with Doug, how many of our career politicians are “willing to serve” and not “looking out for number one”?
Cut their salaries in half and we’ll see how many of these fine upstanding citizens truly want to “serve”.
Or maybe you just can’t accept the fact that one of your heroes crashed and burned in spectacular fashion in 2008.
Did McCain say REPEATEDLY in 2008 that the economy was fine? Did he select the least qualified running mate in the history Presidential politics? Did he not demonstrate a very different Tea Party-esque flavor to his Senate re-election campaign?
I may be a cynic but you are blind to reality. You filter out anything that detracts from your chosen point of view.
“I never get to the point of giving up hope, but that kind of relentless negativity brings me closer than anything else. It’s really, truly depressing.”
Many of us share your hope and optimism. As studious observers of the bipartisan corruption infesting both S. and D.C., however, we believe basing plans on proven facts over convenient speech and opinion.
Doug Ross is correct. McCain should go; he should have gone after “The Keating Five”. But that would have made him appear guiltier, so he remained and received limited absolution from his Senate Ethics Committee colleagues who were lawyers, of course, Brad.
Is it any wonder McCain flaks for such colleagues in return? And Brad, I served in the Navy during McCain’s capture ordeal and even read his book. Yes, he is to be thanked for that service.
Juan, Doug, and Steven Davis II, thanks for making me realize I’m really not that cynical after all.
Doug sees a wart, and decides that is all there is to the man.
And if you dare to point it out, and hold it up as something we need to see more of, you are buried in a dumptruck-load of condemnation.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: A lot of people pat journalists on the back for daring to say powerfully critical things about people in public life, and speak of the journalist’s courage.
It takes no courage to criticize. Believe me, I’m very good at it, and it’s never taxed my courage to let a good broadside rip.
But what takes guts is to say something good about somebody in public life. If you dare to do it, you brace yourself. People will make you pay for that…
… which, of course, is why so many people huddle together in one of the two main partisan political camps. For warmth and reassurance.
They know, by joining one side or the other, that they will always have a bunch of people who will not only agree with them in praising their side and condemning the other, but close ranks with them and defend them to the utmost.
I guess that’s nice for them, but I could never pay the price of admission, which for me would involve denying roughly half of what I believe in, whichever side I chose…
If you think selecting Palin and misreading the worst economic downturn of our lifetime is a “wart”, then maybe you better hurry to your dermatologist.
Making a little speech about some unknown bureaucrat doesn’t balance out his performance for the past five years.
I measure people by their results not their words.
It’s a sign of the times that when a politician behaves in an honorable fashion, it’s news.
There is no way, as much as it pains me to say it, that Palin was the absolute worst VP running mate in our country’s history.
McCain’s inability to see economic calamity ahead was about like the vast majority of people’s awareness of what was to come. He was incorrect. That’s all there is to that. He was somewhere between bamboozled and corrupted by Keating. He admitted it and seems to have grown from the experience.
He isn’t always correct, but he is far more often right, than wrong.
@Kathy – You’re welcome. Hopefully one day you’ll open your eyes and not be wearing rose colored glasses. I make a living forecasting events and working proactively.
“Doug sees a wart, and decides that is all there is to the man.”
Brad see’s a wart, and decides he needs to write about removing something from the Statehouse grounds.
“A lot of people pat journalists on the back for daring to say powerfully critical things about people in public life, and speak of the journalist’s courage.”
And even more give the journalist a dirty look and tell him to mind his how f’ing business. If you aren’t in a warzone, a journalist’s courage is something he keeps in his daily journal.
“I guess that’s nice for them, but I could never pay the price of admission”
Then why on election nights do you typically only go to Democratic candidate’s parties?
Steven, you delude yourself. If you are counting down the days to your government pension you may be forecasting events, but you are surely not working proactively.
Well Mark – I better resign tomorrow then. Hopefully one day I will be as smart as you.
You may be smarter already, Steven. Wiser even.
Only you can say what you are; and what you want to offer the world around you.
I am glad someone mentioned Keating finally. Does anyone know what really goes into having a security clearance? A person’s personal contacts definitely come into play. Perhaps she was properly cleared, but the process is pretty detailed. I find it ironic she is married to the disgraced, bomb throwing Anthony Wiener. I can almost bet that McCain, Graham, et al have miscalculated when it comes to the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood is a scary deal.
Doug, I have many problems with John McCain but here is an instance where he did the right thing by defending a target of the bigoted Tea Party simply because she was a Muslim. If you want to attack someone go after the lunatic Michelle Bachmann and her ilke for this disgusting assault on a patriotic American.
Brad, I applaud McCain for his comments. But this should not serve as a launching pad to deify John McCain for his so-called “gentlemanly” behavior over the course of a lifetime. Frankly his service as a naval officer is completely irrelevant to his admirable speech on the Senate floor. You over-reached with that and that undermined your main point.
@Mark – “what you want to offer the world around you”
Considering that I received another royalty check in the mail yesterday afternoon, it appears the world does want what I have to offer.
@Mark – Just as an FYI – my other response to you wasn’t approved under Brad’s moderation.
“Doug sees a wart, and decides that is all there is to the man”
Yes- but would hoot and holler should the same type of examination be made of his life.