Why McCain Lost Me
By Anne Applebaum
WashPost
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Yesterday, while reading the latest polling data on John McCain, Sarah Palin and their appeal -- or growing lack of it -- to " independent women voters" it suddenly dawned on me: I am one of these elusive independent female voters, and I have the credentials to prove it. For the past couple of decades, I've sometimes voted Democratic, sometimes Republican. I'm even a registered independent, though I did think of switching to vote for John McCain in 2000. But because the last political party I truly felt comfortable with was Thatcher's Conservative Party (I lived in England in the 1980s and 1990s), I didn't actually do it.
The larger point, though, is that if I'm not voting for McCain -- and, after a long struggle, I've realized that I can't -- maybe it's worth explaining why, for I suspect there are other independent voters who feel the same. Particularly because it's not his campaign, disjointed though that has been, that finally repulses me: It's his rapidly deteriorating, increasingly anti-intellectual, no longer even recognizably conservative Republican Party. His problems are not technical; they do not have to do with ads, fundraising or tactics, as some have suggested. They are institutional; they have to do with his colleagues, advisers and supporters.
I should say here that I know McCain, slightly: He spoke at a party given for a book I wrote a few years ago, though I think that was as much about the subject (communist prison camps) as the author. But it's not his personality I admire most. Far more important is his knowledge of foreign affairs, an understanding that goes well beyond an ability to name the Pakistani president. McCain knows not only the names, he knows the people; and by this I mean not just foreign presidents but foreign members of parliament, foreign journalists, foreign generals. He goes to Germany every year, visits Vietnam often. He can talk intelligently about Belarus and Uzbekistan; I've heard him do it. Let's just say that's one of the things that distinguish him from our current president, who once confessed that "this foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating."
(More here.)
WashPost
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Yesterday, while reading the latest polling data on John McCain, Sarah Palin and their appeal -- or growing lack of it -- to " independent women voters" it suddenly dawned on me: I am one of these elusive independent female voters, and I have the credentials to prove it. For the past couple of decades, I've sometimes voted Democratic, sometimes Republican. I'm even a registered independent, though I did think of switching to vote for John McCain in 2000. But because the last political party I truly felt comfortable with was Thatcher's Conservative Party (I lived in England in the 1980s and 1990s), I didn't actually do it.
The larger point, though, is that if I'm not voting for McCain -- and, after a long struggle, I've realized that I can't -- maybe it's worth explaining why, for I suspect there are other independent voters who feel the same. Particularly because it's not his campaign, disjointed though that has been, that finally repulses me: It's his rapidly deteriorating, increasingly anti-intellectual, no longer even recognizably conservative Republican Party. His problems are not technical; they do not have to do with ads, fundraising or tactics, as some have suggested. They are institutional; they have to do with his colleagues, advisers and supporters.
I should say here that I know McCain, slightly: He spoke at a party given for a book I wrote a few years ago, though I think that was as much about the subject (communist prison camps) as the author. But it's not his personality I admire most. Far more important is his knowledge of foreign affairs, an understanding that goes well beyond an ability to name the Pakistani president. McCain knows not only the names, he knows the people; and by this I mean not just foreign presidents but foreign members of parliament, foreign journalists, foreign generals. He goes to Germany every year, visits Vietnam often. He can talk intelligently about Belarus and Uzbekistan; I've heard him do it. Let's just say that's one of the things that distinguish him from our current president, who once confessed that "this foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating."
(More here.)
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