Use of Power

I can’t tell you how many recovering alcoholics I’ve heard say that each time they drank they did so with the belief that “This time I’m not going to get drunk.” That’s always rather bemused me, because I never had that thought in my drinking days. I always knew that I was going to get drunk; why else would I drink? My thought was that, while I was indeed going to get drunk, I was not going to do anything stupid. I sort of missed the point that getting drunk is, itself, pretty stupid; especially when one does it on a regular (i.e. daily) basis. Plus, of course, I pretty much always did something stupid in addition to getting drunk.

Politicians are, I think, much the same with the use of power. They always think, “This time I’m not going to use my power stupidly.” They fail to realize that using power at all is stupid. It doesn’t matter how one uses it or what one does with it, the use of it at all is just plain dumb and self-destructive. Power is one of those things that one needs to have and never, ever actively make use of.

In the 1980’s John McCain was great pals with a slime named Charles Keating. Keating was his patron and showered him with campaign funds, rides on his private jet, parties at his mansion… Keating owned a Savings and Loan which, as was the fashion then, was thoroughly corrupt in its management practices. The Fed, which in those days actually did regulate, was closing in on Keating so Keating asked five of his powerful political allies to contact the Fed and tell them to back off, which they did.

One of the “Keating Five” was John McCain and, for reasons I have never understood, he got off with a minor slap on the wrist. But there is no question that he did contact a federal regulatory agency on behalf of a person who had been providing him with cash donations. Whether or not McCain made argument in favor of that person does not matter: any such contact is hugely improper regardless of the nature of that contact.

McCain claimed then that he had learned his lesson and certainly would never do anything like that again. Except, as we learned in the New York Times yesterday he not only did, but did more than once.

Whether or not he had sex with this lobbyist matters to Cindy McCain; it certainly does not matter to me. The contacts he had with a federal regulatory agency on behalf of a person who had been providing him with cash donations at her behest matter to me quite a lot because they speak to his qualification to serve in this nation’s highest office.

This issue is not trivial and should not be put to rest with his brush-off.