Republicans Should Take Note

Not that I've been following the news closely, but I don't think this story from the Center for Responsive Politics is getting as much play as it should.

Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain, and the fiercely anti-war Ron Paul, though he suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination months ago, has received more than four times McCain's haul.

Looks like it's not just liberals who support an early exit from Iraq.

The Democrats’ Worst Nightmare

A great irony may be unfolding before our eyes. In July, Democratic nominee Barack Obama raised $51 million dollars, while Republican nominee John McCain struggled to raise just over half that ($27 million). Obama’s total of $390 million is more than twice McCain’s $153 million. And yet Obama’s lead over McCain has narrowed.

Democrats have long complained about the power of money in campaigns, and bitterly resented that the Republicans could nearly always outspend them by tapping the wealthy business class. So now they face the stunning possibility that they could outspend the Republicans by a wide margin, yet still lose the election.

That would be ironic indeed, and just how devastating would it be to the Democratic Party?

Cafferty Pistol-whips McCain

For those who don't read CNN.com., I'll point out this vicious--but wholly fair-->critique of John McCain by Jack Cafferty. Here's a sample:

John McCain graduated 894th in a class of 899 at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. His father and grandfather were four star admirals in the Navy. Some have suggested that might have played a role in McCain being admitted. His academic record was awful. And it shows over and over again whenever McCain is called upon to think on his feet.

Ouch, that's gonna leave a mark.

John McCain on the Russia-Georgia Conflict

I used to lean toward voting for McCain because I thought he'd be a better foreign policy president than Obama. I've begun to doubt that, and now there's this:

Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations, withdraw all forces from the sovereign territory of Georgia," McCain told reporters in Iowa.

Well, yes, we all wish that would happen. But does McCain not realize that Georgia chose to escalate the fighting in South Ossetia? And more importantly, does he not realize that it was Russian citizens in South Ossetia who were being attacked by Georgian forces? Would McCain, as president, unconditionally withdraw if American citizens were being targeted?

Here's Barack Obama's comment on the issue:

Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected. All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis.

I think he misses the point that Georgia's territorial integrity is quite a debatable issue, and like McCain, that it was Georgia that ratcheted up the level of conflict.

The quotes are from Foreign Policy Passport, which argues that the war is Russia's way of keeping Georgia to unstable to join NATO. Given how little enthusiasm Russia has for NATO expanding not just to its doorstep but into former USSR territory-- of which Putin, et. al, probably hope to eventually regain control--I'm inclined to agree. That's why it was particularly stupid move for Georgian president Saakashvili, who seems to have belatedly figured that out.

Bush, fortunately, said he was "firm" with Putin, when they spoke at the Olympics. The crisis hasn't taken up too much of his time, however, and I imagine he was firm in this Olympic encounter as well.Does anyone else get the impression that he's not taking this conflict seriously? Does he not realize the significance, or has he already checked out of the job of America's foreign policy leader?

McCain to Add 20,000 Troops to the U.S. Economy

McCain says the U.S. needs "an economic surge." So what's worse, his egregious pandering or his total ignorance of economics?

I Hate the President

The next one, that is.

This is the really bad effect of the long campaign season--candidates have to talk too damn much and they keep having to answer questions. Before a candidate becomes president, the media demand that they have a proposal for dealing with every imaginable political issue. Once the person becomes president, however, they deal with a set of issues that is a combination of those personally selected and those that are simply unavoidable, but they don't have to talk about all the others.

And it's inevitable that all that talking is going to cause them to say things that diminish our confidence in them. Nobody is going to agree with them on all issues, nor does any one person have the best answers to all issues. (As a consequence, I am consciously relying on heuristics to determine my vote this time around, as the more I think about the candidates' positions the more confused I get about my preference.)

And of course it's a real pisser for whomever gets elected, because he'll have no honeymoon in office--none at all. We already know him too well to give him the benefit of the doubt for a while.

If we could compress our campaign season, this problem would largely solved. Unfortunately, the front-loading of the primary system is a classic case of individual rationality resulting in collective irrationality. There's a good solution being floated--rotating regional primaries--but no good mechanism for moving the states toward it.

Can John McCain Win?

That's the question I've been pondering lately. I've been ignoring the polls, which I don't think will mean a lot until after the post-convention bounces, if any, have diminished, and thinking about historical factors, and for the most part they're not in John McCain's favor.

1. One historical factor is that we rarely elect sitting senators to the White House, and none since 1968, but since Obama's a sitting senator, too, we have to throw this one out the window. Whoever wins the election will make history on this count.

2. A second factor is the difficulty of a member of the same party replacing a very unpopular president. Only about 1/3 of the populace approves of the job Bush is doing, and McCain, being the candidate of that president's party, is inevitably seen by many as a continuation of the same. It's not fair, and I don't even think it's accurate, but it happens nonetheless, and it makes winning the election an uphill climb for McCain regardless of any other advantages he might have.

3. A third factor is McCain's age, which actually affects the race in two distinct ways. First, Johh McCain would be the oldest elected president ever. Of course we've broken that record before, most recently with Reagan, but it's obviously a rare thing, and it does seem the American public doesn't generally want presidents who are too old. All other things being equal, this might not be too big a hurdled, but other things aren't equal, because, second, we would be going back a generation, which is, if not unprecedented, exceedingly rare. We have now had two baby boomer presidents in a row, and the liklihood of stepping back to a pre-baby boom president is highly unlikely. The U.S. is, in many ways, a country that has traditionally looked forward, rather than backward, and this general disinclination to revisit future generations to select our presidents is but one example of that.

4. A fourth factor is that McCain is seen as an inisder, while Obama is seen as an outsider (and we can't plausibly both criticize him for lack of experience and claim he's an insider). Every president from Jimmy Carter on, excluding the first President Bush who won on the coattails of a very popular predecessor, has been an outsider, and has trumpeted that fact. Obama may be less of an outsider than Carter or Clinton, but McCain can't possibly compete on this angle--he is the establishment, at a time when we don't like establishment figures. (As to the wisdom of electing outsiders, I beg to differ with my fellow citizens.)

5. Fifth, incumbent presidents don't win when the economy is weak, nor does the person from the same party who would succeed them. It matters not if Phil Gramm is right that we are not in a recession--a majority of Americans believe we are, and their votes will be determined by their own beliefs, not Phil Gramm's. (And could Gramm possibly have done a better job of reinforcing the public perception of the Republican Party as out of touch on economic matters, with his claim that we're just a nation of whiners--my neighbor is on a six week layoff because of the slump in truck sales, and I don't think his financial concerns are merely hypothetical.)

6. Sixth, fundraising matters. It's not true that the biggest winner always wins, but there is a strong correlation, because the person who can spend the most is generally able to define the issues and candidate attributes most successfully. The fundraising differential is probably a function of the other factors listed, but it has electoral effects of its own. And while it's more than just a little bit legitimate to critique Obama for reneging on his pledge to accept public financing, I just don't think that issue will have legs--Republicans never successfully critique the Democrats for having too much money because they are, far more than the Democrats, the party of the wealthy. And as things stand, Obama has raised around 280 million to McCain's 111 million, a stunning differential.

7. Finally, the religious right has been essential in the victories of Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan (and, actually, beginning with Jimmy Carter before him). Despite McCain's promises to elect "strict constructionist" judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade, and in spite of being the graduation speaker at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, religious conservatives have not warmed up to McCain. James Dobson, for one, has said he wouldn't vote for McCain, and my religious conservative mother is very unhappy with his candidacy as well. The question is whether religious conservatives' devout belief in voting will overcome their McCain disdain. If not, look for Obama to pick up Virginia or Colorado--states McCain can't win without.

So can McCain overcome all that to win? I wouldn't bet on it. Keep in mind two things, however. First, campaigns do matter. In the equilibirium situation where both candidates run good campaigns, all the other factors determine the outcome, but if one candidate runs a bad campaign (cough, Dukakis!, cough). But so far McCain has shown the tendency to run the weaker campaign, mostly because he can't resist making jokes that are inappropriate in the particular context (but thank God he has a sense of humor). And Obama has seemed to move on relatively unscathed from what would seem devestating blows, particularly the Jeremiah Wright business. Republicans can justifiably wonder why the scandal isn't sticking, but for my part I'm glad it hasn't, as such scandals have never stuck on the Republicans before. (Let's face it, if Wright had suggested nuking the State Department, he would have been crucified by the right wing, unlike Pat Robertson, who actually did say it and suffered almost no fallout--the patriotism stuff has been a one-sided game for far too long.)

Second, it still remains to be seen whether there are enough moderates and liberals who won't vote for a black man to keep Obama from winning. I personally believe not (and, of course, an Obama loss would not be conclusive evidence, as there are other reasons to oppose him), and I expect that an Obama victory this fall will prove it.

In summary, McCain's only chance is a huge Obama misstep, or to find a scandal that will stick. It's not impossible, but at this point it sure doesn't seem likely.

Wesley Clark Goes off the Rails

Retired general, and former presidential candidate, Wesley Clark needs to publicly apologize to John McCain, and then stuff his fist in his mouth so he doesn't put his foot in it again.

Clark, a Democrat, said John McCain is "untested and untried."

"But he hasn't held executive responsibility," said Clark, a former NATO commander...He hasn't been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn't seen what it's like when diplomats come in and say, 'I don't know whether we're going to be able to get this point through or not,' "

Admittedly, that's accurate. But it's also a wild red herring. Name one presidential candidate who wasn't a general or a former president who has that experience. Surely Clark isn't arguing that only generals are fit to be president?

And the whole thing smacks of criticizing a person's service record, as a smokescreen for criticizing their patriotism. Perhaps that's not what Clark meant, but following the Republicans' attack on the service record and patriotism of Purple Heart winner John Kerry, and of Representative Max Cleland, a man who lost both legs and part of one arm in in Vietnam (reportedly by a grenade dropped by another soldier), his comments have an unmistakeable odor of political bullshit. I've despised Republicans for most of my adult life for playing that dirty, "they ain't real ammuricans" game, and it sickens me to see a Democrat, and a man I once supported for president, treading on the boundaries of the same vile game.

Clark is a supporter of Obama, a man with far less experience than McCain. If military experience matters, Obama has no experience with the hell that war can be, while McCain knows all too well. If political experience is what matters, then McCain has far more experience in the Senate than Obama. If executive experience is what matters--having listened to the diplomats and ordered the bombs to be dropped--then maybe we should cancel the election and just draft General Clark back into the service of his country.

For Whom Should I Vote?

Recently, the Economist had a cover claiming that the primary process had, for the first time in years, given the U.S. two good candidates for the presidency. I agree. I like both McCain and Obama. I think they're both basically decent people whom I'd probably enjoy knowing (in contrast to Bush, Clinton, Kerry, and Gore, none of whom I'm pining to have dinner with).

But, as usual, I'm still uncertain how to vote because each candidate seems to me to have a fatal flaw.

Barack Obama has never really worked in the private sector. His experience is wholly in social service organizations and government, and I fear that he believes those institutions are the true source of most of what makes us better off. He seems to have no conception that the free market is the source of most of our well-being, including the cars we drive, the houses we live in, the computers on which we blog, the clothes we wear, and the food we eat. I worry that in an Obama presidency, the government will continue to assume more and more responsibility for our individual well-being. In addition, he has no experience in foreign affairs, which means Obama will almost certainly focus predominantly on domestic matters until foreign affairs force his attention--this has been the pattern for presidents who couple a dominant interest in domestic matters with a lack of foreign policy experience, from Lyndon Johnson to Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush. Why is it so hard for candidates and the public (and the media, but I never expect anything useful from that source) to recognize that the Constitution makes the President almost solely responsible for foreign affairs, and Congress primarily responsible for domestic affairs? If Obama were to face a Republican Congress I would be less concerned, because the partisan opposition would keep him in check domestically. But givent the pent-up frustration of Democrats (from their failure to accomplish social goals under Clinton to the 8 years of regulatory rollback under Bush) and their likely gains in Congress this year, I worry about a return of Johnson's "Great Society" programs, nearly all of which were costly and dismal failures, and a rollback of the Carter/Reagan economic deregulation which helped lead to the strong economic growth of the past three decades.

John McCain has the foreign policy experience I like, and for the most part I don't care too much where he stands on domestic policy matters. For example, I'm pro-choice and he's not. But even though I know I have unrealistically high standards for presidential candidates, I'm willing to trade off those issues for a candidate with good foreign policy credentials, especially since McCain isn't a fanatic about those issues. (The fact that the religious right despises him is good enough for me.) But what I can't accept is wholesale disdain for the Bill of Rights, and McCain doesn't seem to share my (fanatical) support for the ideals embodied therein. I only on occasion find myself in agreement with Justice Scalia, but I fully agreed with his dissent in McConnell v. FEC, in which the Supreme Court upheld McCain's First Amendment gutting campaign finance law:

Who could have imagined that the same Court which, within the past four years, has sternly disapproved of restrictions upon such inconsequential forms of expression as virtual child pornography,...tobacco advertising, [etc], would smile with favor upon a law that cuts to the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect: the right to criticize the government.

And this week he has attacked the Supreme Court for ruling that the Guantanomo Bay detainees have the right to habeus corpus. The ruling does not mean they get to go free, it simply means that they have the right to demand their day in court--and even then it will be up to the courts to determine if their demand will be fulfilled. The Bush administration has employed the authoritarian tactic of putting people outside the reach of the law, a vicious attack on our Constitution and the ideals embodied in it, and has been repeatedly, and correctly, rebuffed by the Suprme Court. But McCain finds the rule of law distasteful--an odd position for someone who was a prisoner of war--and I have a hard time voting for someone who doesn't stand up for the rule of law as our supreme political ideal.

I would have no problem voting for Obama because he's black. I think breaking the color barrier is a good enough reason to vote, assuming the person is otherwise qualified, and based on the qualifications standard set by some of our recent presidents, it would be wholly disingenous to argue that he's not qualified enough. But our experience with presidents inexperienced in foreign policy makes me shudder at the thought of yet another one. And yet McCain, so qualified in so many other ways, has such a cavalier attitude toward the Bill of Rights--much like our last two presidents--that I'm not sure the country can afford him. Our devotion to the Constitution is hanging by a thread these days, and I'm not sure how many precedents of presidential abuse we can suffer before it simply becomes the accepted norm.

Signs of the Republican Apocalypse

The Republicans lost another traditionally safe congressional seat yesterday. According to news reports, this makes three losses of safe seats in a row. This bodes ill for John McCain this fall. The odds are that Republicans will regain these seats within the next few elections; given how thoroughly most congressional districts have been partisanly gerrymandered, it’s rare for the opposition to hold such a seat for more than two or three terms. But that won’t be any help to McCain, as trends like this do tend to play out as election losses for the incumbent party. Still, campaigns matter, and with Obama appearing to have a safe lead over Clinton, the important question of whether a black candidate can get enough of the middle class white vote remains.

McCain Gets Free Trade Half Right

Campaigning in Youngstown, Ohio, John McCain defended free trade, while still getting it wrong. Here's what he said.

McCain again defended free trade during a town hall meeting at Youngstown State University, but added that other countries have violated the principle at the expense of the U.S. interests. "We have to insist on fair and open competition," McCain told a man who protested Chinese "dumping" of cheap steel, crippling steel communities such as Youngstown.

McCain dangerously mixes the notion of "fair" trade with free trade, showing that he still doesn't really get it. Let's say China's not being fair, that they are "dumping" goods in the U.S., and not allowing U.S. goods in. Conventional wisdom, and McCain is wholly conventional here, says the U.S. is being hurt while China prospers. But, as so often happens, conventional wisdom is anything but wise.

The more goods and services you can buy, the more well off you are. So if China sells stuff to us super-cheap, we can buy more stuff, and we're better off. It also leaves us more money left over to buy other stuff, including American made stuff, like dvds of Hollywood movies, dinner at Applebees, Amish-made furniture, etc.

On the other hand, if China is really selling things below cost, then they are losing money, and their ability to buy goods and services is declining. And if they are really keeping American made goods out of China, then they're just depriving themselves of access to quality goods.

In other words, if China doesn't play fair, America gets richer while China gets poorer.

Unfortunately, too many people still think the basis of the good life is jobs, rather than goods and services. Jobs are merely the means to the end of acquiring lots of goods and services. It's an odd misconception to have, when you consider that most people's vision of paradise is having everything we need without having to work. Just think, if China really did "dump" goods on America, giving us everything we need for free, it would destroy millions of jobs--but we'd be that much closer to paradise.

Why I Can't Vote for Obama II: Foreign Policy

Yesterday I wrote part I of why I can't vote for Obama. Here's part II. Tomorrow I'll write about why I might vote for Obama anyway.

In the spring of 2003, my friend Muqtedar Kahn organized a panel at Adrian College to discuss the then-looming invasion of Iraq. I staunchly opposed it, on the grounds that it was unnecessary and that we would be stuck in Iraq for a very long time.

Flash forward 5 years, and I'm seriously considering voting for John McCain, who said we could be in Iraq for a hundred years." What's happened to change my mind?

Actually, nothing. All along I have taken a contrary position--that we should not go in, but that if we did, we'd have a duty to stay as long as necessary. Because once we've gone in and destabilized the country, it's our duty to restabilize it, no matter how difficult. (This is no defense of Saddam: he was purely evil, but that in itself doesn't justify invasion, nor would it justify quitting early, while the country is still the f***ed up mess we created.)

And I said from the beginning that we would be there for decades, if for no other reason than to use it as a forward based for the military--e.g., the same reasons we're still in Japan and Germany more than 60 years after WWII. And does anyone expect we'll be out of those countries entirely by the hundreth anniversary of VJ and VE days?

Leaving Iraq too early would result in a full blown civil war that could ensnare neighboring countries, particularly Syria and Iran. It was a foolish foreign policy move to invade, but it would be just as, or even more, foolish to leave too soon.

Barack Obama claims to have been opposed to the invasion of Iraq, and reportedly gave a speech opposing it (text is reproduced here and here. Since the Senate voted to authorize use of force in October, 2002, and he wasn't elected to the Senate until 2004, it's impossible to say how he would really have voted had he already been a senator. But I'll take him at his word that he opposed the war. So did I, and so he and I are in agreement on that point.

But here's what his website says about what he thinks we ought to do now.

Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.

And here's what he's said on the campaign trail.

"It is time to bring our troops home because it has made us less safe.

Yes, the invasion of Iraq has made us less safe, and we have Bush to thank for that. But notice the purely self-interested tone of Obama's statement: it has made us less safe. There's no concern for Iraqis, no concern for stability in the Middle East, no concern for the moral duty we now have towards Iraq, and no concern for the strategic implications for US foreign policy (American strength is a huge problem, but American weakness would be even worse--no other country in the world has the US's ability to intervene to prevent genocides and invasions, although we rarely use that power well.)

We already have a history, of which Obama seems wholly unaware, of undependability in the Middle East. We supported Iran, until the citizens overthrew our dictator there, then we swithched our support to Iraq, until that dictator did something we didn't like. Early in the war, we'd lay seige to a city until we drove out both insurgents and inhabitants, then we'd leave, and the insurgents would return and retaliate against anyone who had helped US troops (the "surge" in Iraq has really been a shift in strategy, so that we now stick around a place after driving out the bad guys). So how would leaving by by May of 2010 reverberate around the Middle East? Once again, you just can't depend on Americans.

Obama is making the classic mistake of comparing a real-world state of affairs to an ideal state of affairs. His belief that US withdrawal will put pressure on Iraq's leaders to reconcile is woefully naive (does he think the Serbs and Kosovars would reconcile nicely if the UN and NATO withdrew?), and smacks of Rodney King's plaintant "Can't we all just get along?"

Colin Powell was right:

'You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,' he told the president. 'You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all.' (Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack)

We own that responsibility, and Obama's engaging in wishful thinking about how to fulfill it.

In Which I Challenge Ed Brayton to a Friendly Wager

In a post about James Dobson's claim that he'll sit out the election if John McCain is the Republican nominee., Ed Brayton calls Dobson a liar (true enough, I think), and makes the following prediction.

...he's pretending that he'll sit out the election in order to gain maximum leverage in cutting a deal with McCain in exchange for his support...And the deal will be that when there is a Supreme Court opening, McCain picks from their short list.

I could be a fool, but I agree with the Republicans who claim McCain isn't that conservative. I also think McCain knows damn well that his support is coming from the middle. So I don't think he'd commit to such a deal to get Dobson's endorsement, and I don't think he'll appoint an ultra-conservative to the Supreme Court.

So I challenged Ed to a friendly wager.

If Dobson endorses McCain,, and if McCain is elected, and if McCain gets a Supreme Court appointment, I bet he chooses a moderate. I prefer beer, scotch, or bourbon as the wager, but I don't know if Ed's a drinker--I guess I could stoop to wearing a Duke shirt if I lose.

I think the odds of McCain winning are slim, so this bet would probably be a safe one for both parties.

And this isn't intended as a slam at Ed, who runs what I think is the best political blog on the web. Mostly I just want to put myself on record, so if I'm wrong I can't deny it (you know, like those pathetic creationists and IDiots constantly do).

Edwards Drops Out

With any luck, we've heard the last of John Edwards, who just dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination. I've never liked him much, but I'm still surprised he managed to be a distant third behind a woman with a grating voice and a black man with no experience. We really have come a long way, because Edwards, a white guy, has barely any more experience than Obama (the black man, in case you didn't guess), and much less than the woman (you did guess, Clinton, right?)

Hopefully Edwards' plea for economic protectionism and regulation will die with his candidacy. He wants to take the U.S. back to the 1970s, when your only choice of cars (unless you were wealthy) was one over-priced badly-made American car or another, because of strict quotas on Japanese imports. When flying was a delightful experience, but only the well-off could afford to do it. When telecom regulation meant phone customers still rented their phones from Ma Bell.

I also dislike Edwards because he thinks the president's primary responsibility is for domestic policy. Read the second article of the U.S. Constitution carefully, and compare the presidency's domestic policy responsibilities (few, and all in concordance with Congress), and its foreign policy responsibilities. I'm not sure Edwards has read it. After less than 2 years in the Senate, he felt qualified to be the leader of the free world, and began his campaign for the presidency. Over the succeeding 4 years he spent so much time campaigning that he probably didn't gain any real experience even from being in the Senate. Is he ready to deal with North Korea, Iran, China and Russia?

If you doubt foreign policy is a president's real task, look at George W. Bush. He had one big issue in his first campaign, cutting taxes. He knew nothing about foreign policy and didn't want to focus on it (e.g., his cutting off of talks with N. Korea), but his presidency will be defined by the war in Iraq. Or look at Jimmy Carter: he wanted to save the environment, but got bogged down by the Iran hostage crisis. He also brokered the still-strong peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, but that just reinforces the point--a president will be defined by foreign affairs.

That's my criticism of Obama, as well. The difference is, I like Obama. I lived in Illinois when he won his Senate seat, and I remember thinking, "this is the kind of person the Democratic Party needs to reach church-going Americans again." I thought he might make a great presidential candidate in about 10 years--not 3! Depending on who the Republican nominee is, I could consider voting for Obama, but mostly to be on the right side of history, so to speak. I don't mean I would do it for affirmative action, but that I think Romney is no more qualified, and is in many ways more repugnant, so if I have to choose between two unqualified persons, any other criteria is good enough grounds to choose. But since I usually vote Libertarian, my only reason for departure from voting for a certain loser yet again would be to make the statement that it's ok to elect a non-white to the oval office.

I like Hillary far less than Obama, but am more supportive of her for President. Despite her failed national health-care fiasco--actually, because of it--she clearly learned a lot about being president in her 8 years as first lady, and in the Senate she has served on the Armed Services Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She's smart enough to have learned a lot that a president needs to know. I would also vote for her over Romney, for much the same reasons I would vote for Obama.

But I still favor McCain, because I don't care about a president's stand on taxes, abortion, or campaign finance reform (McCain is the author of the First Amendment gutting McCain-Feingold law, for which I will never forgive him). A president's job is to deal with other countries, and I don't see any other candidate remotely as qualified for that task as John McCain.