The Reverend McCain
By Francis Wilkinson
In an essay on The Times Op-Ed page in March, the writer Neal Gabler suggested that the reason John McCain has enjoyed excellent relations with the press is that they are birds of a feather. According to Mr. Gabler, Mr. McCain is “an ironist wooing a group of individuals who regard ironic detachment more highly than sincerity or seriousness.”
The flip side of this shared reverence for irreverence, however, is the discomfort it induces in those for whom sincerity is serious. Though Mr. McCain belongs to a Southern Baptist congregation in Phoenix and made headlines last year calling America a “Christian nation,” he still oozes a fighter pilot’s four-letter regard for piety. Many Christian conservatives, who’ve been battling purveyors of ironic detachment ever since Clarence Darrow showed up at the Scopes trial, don’t get the joke — and don’t want to.
This may be a bigger sore point than Mr. McCain’s lack of enthusiasm for marriage amendments or his reluctance to put the kibosh on stem cell research. Mr. McCain doesn’t just irritate Christian conservatives like Dr. James Dobson on retail issues; he alienates them wholesale. In a broadcast report heralding “a new religious landscape” in which evangelical votes are up for grabs, David Brody of CBN News noted that Mr. McCain still “hasn’t shared his faith walk with voters.” To the former Navy man, who has managed to keep his religion mostly to himself for 71 years, it probably sounds like walking the plank.
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kwestin folks
I haven't yet sorted through the detritus but it seems to me that for all its ostensible flaws the Democratic Party was much better served by its primary process than the Republicans were served by theirs. While pundits were proclaiming Obama as the another Dukakis, the GOP winner-take-all system produced another Dole - a respected, venerable figure in Washington circles but hardly the ideal standard bearer for a national campaign. How did McCain win this thing? Was it merely mathematical determinism? It appears that Huckabee and to a lesser extent Romney would have been much stronger but couldn't pass muster with free market demagogues and evangelicals respectively. Rick Perlstein's account of Richard Nixon's face-off against against the elder Romney doesn't mention anything about his Mormonism being a deficit. If anything it was his public reversal on the Vietnam War.
Clarence Darrow was not the
Clarence Darrow was not the symbol of ironic detachment at the Scopes trial. It was H.L. Mencken. His July 25, 1925 dispatch to the Evening Baltimore Sun which is titled the Hills of Zion starts off as follows:
"It was hot weather when they tried the infidel Scopes at Dayton, Tenn., but I went down there very willingly, for I was eager to see something of evangelical Christianity as a going concern. In the big cities of the Republic, despite the endless efforts of consecrated men, it is laid up with a wasting disease."
How did McCain win this
The GOP's coalition blew up such that no single piece is large ot strong enough to make the others coalesce around it. That left purely political considerations in charge.
McCain is the pure politician's heir apparent.
The only game in town
I remember when Norman Mailer said that they went to war to boost the white male ego : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article871969.ece
It is understandable that white America wants someone to to be proud of like Ronald Reagan. This is what is keeping McCain in this thing. This shouldn't even be close. According to Gallup the two are tied?? What is troubling is that I'm still hearing white women asking what does he want to change? Do you really have to ask? How can Clinton and Obama have no significant differences between the two on policy, yet these women are saying they don't know what he wants to change in the economy, health care, education, etc.? There are two choices in this election. Obama needs to kiss no ass, and placate no one. Look at the social conservatives. How does it feel to be the "niggers" of the right, with no where else to go? So Obama is wasting his time trying to court these voters that are voting on race and race alone. Race is the only game in town.