McCain Boxes Himself into a Corner

How would you enjoy being the Republican candidate for president, the supposed party of the military and the troops, and choosing to take a position against the new GI bill, which provides increased benefits and a promise of an education to military men and women emerging from their stint in the military? How would you like to align yourself with a president with the lowest approval rating in the modern era and against 75 senators who voted to pass the new GI bill, many of whom are Republicans? And how much would you love to be outclassed by your opponent, who is on the right side of this argument, even though you try your best to belittle him and accuse him of naivety?

Well, welcome to the life of John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, who seems to be on the wrong side of a number of issues. This one just won’t go away, and for many reasons. One of those reasons is that the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, won’t allow it to go away. It is a winning issue for Barack, and he is seizing on this issue because it demonstrates how completely out of touch John McCain is.

The real irony is that McCain is an experienced military man of valor and renown. He has shown, though, that military experience is not the only requirement and qualification to be commander in chief. Additionally, McCain himself has said in previous interviews that military service is not a requirement to be the president, and many of his Republican predecessors, namely Dick Cheney and marginally George W. Bush, have steered clear of military service.

Barack Obama has made it very clear that he is strongly in support of the troops currently serving this country and those that will serve in the future. He has drawn a distinction, as most of us have drawn, that we can support the serviceman and woman without supporting the mission they are performing. His eloquent arguments in favor of this bill have scored some major points with the electorate on both sides of the aisle, and at the same time poked some huge holes in the McCain argument.

McCain claims to be against the new GI bill because it will encourage military participants to leave their service to take advantage of the increased benefits. Although I don’t agree with that argument, he certainly has the right to make it. But it apparently doesn’t hold water because, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), 16% additional men and women will join the military simply because the new GI bill exists http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/05/10/on-gi-bill-mccain-really-is-full-of-it/.

McCain’s problem is that he has changed his position on quite a few things over the years, and even more recently, his positions on some rather prominent issues have been called into question because he originally came down on one side and now is solidly on the other, and his reputation as someone who will take whatever position that proves his conservative credentials no matter what he said previously has become a problem for him. Should he ultimately decide to support the new GI bill if it becomes law, he will look like a hypocrite, and if he continues to lobby against its passage simply to make Obama look out of touch, he will only show his own stubbornness and unwillingness to properly and correctly analyze an issue, particularly one that he claims to be so intimately familiar with.

So would anyone wish to be John McCain on this issue and be stuck with the position that he’s so loudly pronounced? I doubt it. Barack Obama has got to be feeling pretty good about being right on this issue, voting with the majority of the Senate, and maybe most importantly, taking time out of his demanding campaign schedule to come to the Senate floor to argue for the bill’s passage. John McCain, in a strikingly defiant demonstration of his confidence that his reputation as a military veteran will speak for itself, didn’t even bother to show up to vote.