“McCain is not Bush” but he too lives in denial
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This does not need much elaboration. George W. Bush ignored the painful reality of the war in Iraq for far too long and it did cost America dearly. In fact, one of the most definitive record of his management by denial is in the aptly named book State of Denial by Pulitzer Prize Investigative Journalist Bob Woodward, who has been rather sympathetic to the Bush Administration in his previous books The Plan of Attack and Bush at War.
But the war in Iraq was not the only scenario where Bush DID cling to his rose tinted glasses. He had previously ignored warnings of 9/11, thought Brownie’s management of Katrina was “heckofajob” and continued to support Ex-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Political Advisor Karl Rove until they had to be sacked because of political opposition. He believed that the fundamentals of economy were strong until May this year (Shame on McCain for stealing his phrase). In each of these circumstances, it seemed Bush was living in an ‘alternate reality’ as if the War in Iraq was going great, there was no real threat from Al-Qaeda (even when Clinton had handed over SPECIFIC plans to handle such situations), everyone in New Orleans was still having a party and house prices were going up 20% each month.
Now, no one expects the Commander-in-chief to be showing weakness in the time of war or any other crisis. But being optimistic is not a product of denial. If you just lost your job, you might stay optimistic thinking you did save for rainy days. But showing up to your work after getting laid off will not help you in anyway.
While Bush enjoyed his time in his ‘alternate reality’, he ignored questions and criticisms from human reality and tried to ignore reporters and advisors who attempted to pull him back to reality.
This is why I was shocked to see a ’seemingly combative’ John McCain doing the EXACT same things on Meet The Press last Sunday. You can find the complete transcript of this interview below but what comes out very strongly is that McCain is unwilling to acknowledge that he is losing in polls, unwilling to acknowledge that people do believe Obama is ready to be President and blames the media for coming up with ‘not realistic polls’. That’s not being optimistic, that’s just a state of denial - very much like the last 8 years. No wonder, Obama has the kind of lead he does.
The Meet the Press discussion starts with McCain rejecting the range of the polls and accepting the only one that is most favorable to him -
SEN. McCAIN: [...] And look, those polls have been consistently shown me much further behind than we actually are. It all depends on the voter turnout model. And, and everybody gets bored except for us junkies about the process and aught. We’re doing fine. We have closed in the last week. We continue this close through next week, you’re going to be up very, very late on election night.
We are very competitive in many of the battleground states, and I see these polls ranging from a 3 point gap today in Zogby to your 11 point one. And they’re all over the map; and, obviously, I choose to trust my senses as well as polls.
But his irritation increases as Tom Brokaw continues to show him poll numbers -
MR. BROKAW: …very issue in a moment. One of the things that you’ve been saying in the course of your campaign is that Senator Obama has neither the experience nor the judgment to be the president of the United States. We’ve got some polls on how he’s doing with the American voter on some of the critical issues of the day. This is the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that was taken from October 17th to October 20th.
On health care, who’s better equipped to deal with that? Obama has a 39 point advantage over you in that poll. As you can see, the economy is up 21 points; the housing crisis, a 21 point advantage; taxes, 14; in Iraq, you have an advantage over Senator Obama of about 5 points. These are not pundits…
SEN. McCAIN: We finally found a pony.
MR. BROKAW: These are not the pundits or the media elite. This is a broad-based poll across the country.
SEN. McCAIN: Yeah. That I don’t agree with.
This is outright rejection of the polls. He is not saying, no numbers might be off by 5-10 points, he is saying I don’t agree with the polls that are counter intuitive to my idea of Barack Obama as the inexperienced candidate. This is straight out of the Bush book of denials.
MR. BROKAW: People making judgments about who’s qualified.
SEN. McCAIN: But I don’t agree with their, with their conclusion that I’m a, quote, 11 or 12 or 14 point, whatever it is.
But Brokaw is not talking about polls Obama/McCain polls. He is talking about polls specific to “Who is going to handle X better?” Doesn’t seem like McCain is listening - Does he? It seems to me for McCain every poll should be lumped in one category - Obama is winning, so there must be something wrong with the poll. Even though the same polls show McCain still leading about 5 points on National Security.
Anyways, by this point, McCain is definitely very uncomfortable:
SEN. MCCAIN: We have polls, including I think a Zogby poll, showing us 3 or 4 points behind. So if you want to continue to referring to a poll that I disagree with, I have to start out our conversation I don’t agree with that. We are closing and we have been closing.
MR. BROKAW: But it’s not the only poll, Senator. A number of polls show that.
SEN. McCAIN: Oh, and it’s not the only poll that shows us close.
And then comes an outright attempt to change the conversation -
SEN. McCAIN: So, you know, I’m sure we don’t want to spend the morning arguing about polls that are accurate or inaccurate, but I will stand before the American people with my view that, that I think that we don’t, we cannot fine small business people and their, you know,
And what follows is an attempt to avoid harsh reality and combativeness -
MR. BROKAW: All right. I, I, I don’t want to dwell on these polls unduly.
SEN. McCAIN: Yeah.
MR. BROKAW: But even if you had a big…
SEN. McCAIN: Here we go again.
MR. BROKAW: …if you even had, even if you had a big margin of error…
SEN. McCAIN: I can give, I can show you…
MR. BROKAW: Yeah.
SEN. McCAIN: …again, a Zogby poll and our poll and other polls that will show different numbers than the one you’re showing. So…
MR. BROKAW: Well, yeah, but those are the big universe polls.
SEN. McCAIN: So you’re starting out, in all due respect…
MR. BROKAW: Yeah.
SEN. McCAIN: …with fundamental assumptions that I don’t agree with. So it’s hard for me to respond to assumptions that I don’t agree with.
Classic Bush.. I mean McCain?
