Independent UK: We have everything to fear from McCain

[marmar]

Johann Hari: We have everything to fear from McCain

Thursday, 17 July 2008



When the almost six billion of us outside the US watch the contest for The Most Powerful Man in the World, we tend to focus on the candidates' foreign policies. If I was Iranian, say, I'd be anxious that John McCain keeps joking in public about killing me. As a bravo-bow after singing "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys melody Barbra Ann, he responded to being told exports of cigarettes to Iran are high by guffawing: "That's a way of killing them!"

But there's a way in which the next US president will affect you even more directly than foreign policy. By his economic decisions, the next president will help swing the price of the food you eat and the wages you earn – wherever you live on earth.

So it's a little worrying that John McCain – who still has a reasonable chance of winning – says: "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should... To be honest, I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated."

This is a man who can't tell his Sunni from his Shia, and who opposed the Northern Ireland peace process as a capitulation to terrorism. And he admits he knows even less about the economy than that. On one occasion, he let his irritation with the subject slip by referring to it as "the credit cunt".

When he is forced to talk about the economy, McCain has always given the same answer: "I rely on the circle I have developed over many years – people like Phil Gramm." He has Herbert Hoovered-up his slivers of economic theory from this man – but who is Gramm? Until he briefly sputtered into the headlines a few days ago, nobody had cared to look.

Phil Gramm is an ornery old ex-Texas senator who seems to have swooped out of the most scathing H L Mencken sketch. He became McCain's "best friend in politics" – and started speaking to him every day – when they linked arms to stop Hillary Clinton's 1993 push to extend healthcare to poor Americans.

He calls for "ruthlessly" slashing government spending – but only focuses on spending on the poor. When he was told paying for healthcare plunged many 80-year-olds into poverty, he said: "Most of us don't have the luxury of living to be 80 years old, so it's hard for me to feel sorry for them." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-we-have-everything-to-fear-from-mccain-869681.html

[spindrifter]

1. This is an excellent piece!

It shows that the free market doesn't necessarily produce viable decisions for the majority. Instead, there needs to be appropriate regulation.

[salguine]

2. Like storming-the-Bastille type regulation.

[glitch]

3. "Don't know much about e-co-nom-ics, just what Keating taught me.

Wish I'd paid better attention to the Bush method of looting. Much more lucrative and they never get held to account." what McCain might've said, in a rare lucid moment, had there ever been one.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. A very good article that shows Gramm would be to McCain in economics

what Cheney is to Bush in foreign policy - the guiding hand whose ideology is fixed, and toxic to everyone apart from the man themselves.