"McCAIN MYTH... Take His Take On Hamas -- Please!"
McCain is out of his element as a presidential candidate. Anyone with
a teenager's analytical ability can see he's GRASPING AT STRAWS in
order to toss bull**** and outright lies at American voters. But the
media are watching him
carefully, and listening. Because almost all of his public
pronouncements are flimsy and hollow, even upon cursory examination.
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"Hypocrisy on Hamas"
"McCain Was for Talking Before He Was Against It"
By James P. Rubin
Friday, May 16, 2008; A19
If the recent exchanges between President Bush, Barack Obama and John
McCain on Hamas and terrorism are a preview of the general election,
we are in for an ugly six months. Despite his reputation in the media
as a charming maverick, McCain has shown that he is also happy to use
Nixon-style dirty campaign tactics. By charging recently that Hamas is
rooting for an Obama victory, McCain tried to use guilt by association
to suggest that Obama is weak on national security and won't stand up
to terrorist organizations, or that, as Richard Nixon might have put
it, Obama is soft on Israel.
President Bush picked up this theme yesterday. Without naming Obama
during his speech last night to Israel's Knesset, Bush suggested that
Democrats want to "negotiate with terrorists" while Republicans want
to fight terrorists.
The Obama campaign was right to criticize the president for his
remarks and for engaging in partisan politics while overseas. Many
presidents have said things abroad that could be construed as
violating this unwritten rule of American politics. But it is hard to
remember any president abusing the prestige of his office in as crude
a way as Bush did yesterday. Charging your opponents with appeasement
and likening them to Neville Chamberlain in the Knesset is a brutal
blow. It is bad enough that Republicans use the politics of personal
destruction here at home, but to deploy that kind of political weapon
at an occasion as solemn as an American president addressing the
parliament of a friendly government marks a new low.
McCain, meanwhile, is guilty of hypocrisy. I am a sup****ter of Hillary
Clinton and believe that she was right to say, about McCain's
statement on Hamas, "I don't think that anybody should take that
seriously." Unfortunately, the Republicans know that some people will.
That's why they say such things.
But given his own position on Hamas, McCain is the last politician who
should be attacking Obama. Two years ago, just after Hamas won the
Palestinian parliamentary elections, I interviewed McCain for the
British network Sky News's "World News Tonight" program. Here is the
crucial part of our exchange:
I asked: "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the
way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if
Hamas is now in charge?"
McCain answered: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going
to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why
this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy
towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things
that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new
reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security
and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah
was not giving them that."
For some Europeans in Davos, Switzerland, where the interview took
place, that's a perfectly reasonable answer. But it is an unusual if
not unique response for an American politician from either party. And
it is most certainly not how the newly conservative presumptive
Republican nominee would reply today.
Given that exchange, the new John McCain might say that Hamas should
be rooting for the old John McCain to win the presidential election.
The old John McCain, it appears, was ready to do business with a Hamas-
led government, while both Clinton and Obama have said that Hamas must
change its policies toward Israel and terrorism before it can have
diplomatic relations with the United States.
Even if McCain had not favored doing business with Hamas two years
ago, he had no business smearing Barack Obama. But given his stated
position then, it is either the height of hypocrisy or a case of
political amnesia for McCain to inject Hamas into the American
election.
[The writer, an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of
International Affairs, was an assistant secretary of state and the
State Department's chief spokesman during the Clinton administration.]
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/15/AR2008051503306.html
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