| Five Frameworks For Viewing McCain's Fanning The Flames vs. Russia
(1) The Republican's "October Surprise". Named for a long-suspected, and now virtually certain clandestine plot by the 1980 Reagan/Bush campaign to prevent the release of American hostages by Iran prior to the 1980 election, thus ensuring Jimmy Carter's defeat. A similar effort by Richard Nixon, to sabotage the 1968 Paris Peace Talks, and prevent the election of Hubert Humphrey, has been solidly confirmed. Thus, deliberate interference in foreign affairs by the McCain campaign would be part of an established pattern of GOP lawlessness in manipulating the outcome of presidential elections, and there is increasing reason to think that McCain's campaign-or at least individuals associated with it-played a role in precipitating this crisis. They are certainly involving themselves in keeping it alive.
(2) The "Bush Dyslexicon" analysis. In 2001, Mark Crispin Miller published The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder, in which he argued that Bush's difficulty in expressing himself coherently ("I know how hard it is to put food on your family," etc.) was confined to subjects he was not really interested in. When it came to what he cared about-primarily sports and hurting people-he was routinely quite lucid. The same appears to apply to McCain, as he has suddenly become quite sharp and highly focused following a long period in which he has appeared increasingly "Dazed and Confused" as TPM titled a recent vidoe compilation of his visible disorientation.
(3) The comfortable Cold Warrior. McCain's long-time hostility to Russia-even after the collapse of the Soviet Union-is indicative of mindset frozen in the Cold War Era. While there are certainly others whose experience in that era has limited their ability to adapt to the post-Cold War world, the recent events serve as a powerful reminder that McCain is one of the most deeply tied to that era, and the most incapable of adjusting to the world as it has been now for almost the last 20 years.
(4) The Neocon's Agenda for world dominance. Because the neocon adventure in Iraq has turned out so disasterously, most people fail to appreciate that Iraq was supposed to be a cakewalk, and that the neocon's real primary targets are China and Russia. Although not strictly a neocon-his attitudes derive more from the imperialist naval doctrine that animated the birth of America's "Great White Fleet" 100 years ago-McCain has been a neocon darling since 1999-2000 campaign, when he was their favorite far more than George W. Bush.
(5) "Rogue State Rollback" is the specific neocon formulation McCain embraced in the 1990s for rationalizing and selling the world dominance agenda. As a justification, it is far more durable and adaptable than misdirecting blame for 9/11, which can probably only be done one or two more times. The situation with Russia and Georgia is only a slight variant on that formulation.
If liberals and Democrats had actually been fighting the Gramscian "culture war" the right has been fighting for the past 30 years, you'd be hearing a lot about McCain in terms of these five frameworks. But as things stand, only the last three are likely to get any play at all, and it will quite a struggle to get even those pushed from the blogosphere into the Versailles media-even with someone like Andrew Sullivan solidly on the case. In fact, the comfortable Cold Warrior framework is probably the only one with a chance to get any sort of real hearing.
Maybe we can get Paris Hilton to do an ad about it. |
