Straight Talk About Straight Talk

Somehow, I never found my way onto the bandwagon for John McCain. I guess he's appealing if one goes for gruff, authoritarian figures, but that's never been my style. Sure, he's got that whole maverick image going for him, but he's never really seemed quite so maverick when it was important--he's gotten onboard the whole Bush agenda. That's bad enough on its face, of course, but after what Bush (or Bush surrogates) viciously did to McCain during the 2000 primaries in South Carolina, it's unconscionable. McCain was attacked with claims that his experience as a POW in Vietnam had made him unstable, but when that didn't get enough traction, the whisper campaign went after his family. Yet McCain remains an ardent Bush supporter.

In case you're thinking about hopping back aboard the Straighttalk Express in 2008, Paul Krugman would like a few words with you. Oh sure, Krugman resides in the lofty heights behind The New York Times's subscription curtain, but his Monday column is available to us through the generosity of B12 Partners Solipsism. Here are a few tidbits:

Mr. McCain's reputation as a moderate may be based on his former opposition to the Bush tax cuts. In 2001 he declared, "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us."

But now — at a time of huge budget deficits and an expensive war, when the case against tax cuts for the rich is even stronger — Mr. McCain is happy to shower benefits on the most fortunate. He recently voted to extend tax cuts on dividends and capital gains, an action that will worsen the budget deficit while mainly benefiting people with very high incomes.

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So here's what you need to know about John McCain.

He isn't a straight talker. His flip-flopping on tax cuts, his call to send troops we don't have to Iraq and his endorsement of the South Dakota anti-abortion legislation even while claiming that he would find a way around that legislation's central provision show that he's a politician as slippery and evasive as, well, George W. Bush.

He isn't a moderate. Mr. McCain's policy positions and Senate votes don't just place him at the right end of America's political spectrum; they place him in the right wing of the Republican Party.

Krugman also cites data from Voteview, which identifies McCain's voting record as the third-most conservative in the Senate, bowing only to Senators Kyl and Sununu. He's not what the media sets him up to be. Don't fall for it.