UNEXAMINED STEREOTYPES

14 June 08
Doubtless on both sides of the presidential campaign stereotypes persist. Most salient at the moment appear to be the characterizations of McCain as a war hero qualified therefore to make strategic judgments and as a maverick whose independent mind leads him to depart time and again from party orthodoxy. People – including the opposing candidates, when there were more than one – don’t question the military authority that he claims even when they differ with him sharply on the judgment of continuing the war in Iraq. But with that judgment, he falls – ironically, without their experience in making strategic judgments – into the same class as generals on the Western Front in the First World War who, with experience from which they learned little or nothing, went on sending men to futile slaughter by the tens of thousands. McCain’s characterization as a maverick is equally uncompelling in implication. He was, a few years ago, a maverick on a number of issues, but now he is consistently an orthodox Republican on the war, on tax cuts for the rich, on reproductive rights for women. Mark Shields, on the PBS Newshour Friday evening 13 June, declared that McCain is a maverick and Shields said that he acknowledged as much. He then went on, ironically, to point out that McCain’s position on taxes was the orthodox Republican position. Shields and his partner David Brooks went on to converge on predicting a campaign opposing orthodox Republican positions to orthodox Democratic ones.