The Wrong Fight
By Rachel Kleinfeld
NYT blog
Rachel Kleinfeld is the executive director of the Truman National Security Project.
John McCain has told us — over and over again — that he is willing to fight. In fact, he relishes a fight. So much so that, in his own words Thursday night, he said he liked to “pick a few fights for the fun of it.”
Now, I’m from a loud, combative family, and I’ve picked a good, principled fight time and again. But a fight on principle is different than a half-cocked drunken roundhouse. And that was the kind of fight Senator McCain was picking with Russia Thursday. Renewing the cold war as a cheer line for an otherwise flat campaign speech? That’s not being a maverick — that’s being reckless.
Senator McCain’s temper, renowned in Washington, may occasionally be principled when he is speaking as one of 100 senators, but it’s dangerous in higher office. A man who enjoys fighting as much as John McCain does, who is combative in his personal relations within his own country, that is not a temperament we need in the Oval Office. He wanted Thursday’s speech to be about character — and Americans should pay attention to his. A reckless man is a danger in a volatile world.
Curiously, for all his fighting words, there was one fight that Senator McCain forgot to mention Thursday. And that was Afghanistan. The country did not appear once in his speech. Nor did it appear in Sarah Palin’s speech on Wednesday, or in Joseph Lieberman’s the night before.
(Continued here.)
NYT blog
Rachel Kleinfeld is the executive director of the Truman National Security Project.
John McCain has told us — over and over again — that he is willing to fight. In fact, he relishes a fight. So much so that, in his own words Thursday night, he said he liked to “pick a few fights for the fun of it.”
Now, I’m from a loud, combative family, and I’ve picked a good, principled fight time and again. But a fight on principle is different than a half-cocked drunken roundhouse. And that was the kind of fight Senator McCain was picking with Russia Thursday. Renewing the cold war as a cheer line for an otherwise flat campaign speech? That’s not being a maverick — that’s being reckless.
Senator McCain’s temper, renowned in Washington, may occasionally be principled when he is speaking as one of 100 senators, but it’s dangerous in higher office. A man who enjoys fighting as much as John McCain does, who is combative in his personal relations within his own country, that is not a temperament we need in the Oval Office. He wanted Thursday’s speech to be about character — and Americans should pay attention to his. A reckless man is a danger in a volatile world.
Curiously, for all his fighting words, there was one fight that Senator McCain forgot to mention Thursday. And that was Afghanistan. The country did not appear once in his speech. Nor did it appear in Sarah Palin’s speech on Wednesday, or in Joseph Lieberman’s the night before.
(Continued here.)
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