Corey Pierce

Eight years ago, it was all too easy for detractors and opponents of George W. Bush to react to his election with exaggerated dismay and fear. By the same token, it was all too easy for his supporters to dismiss those fears as so much sour griping by Democrats and their allies abroad. Within a year, however, even the darkest of predictions had been overtaken by events.

Within days of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush announced his proposed “war on terror.” This war would take the U.S. first into Afghanistan and then Iraq in a bid to hunt down those responsible for 9/11.

Eight years later, Osama bin Laden remains at large, al-Qaida’s strength has grown and the Taliban is still a force in Afghanistan. In Iraq, the unfinished war has cost the lives of over 4,000 U.S. troops, killed more than 1.25 million Iraqi soldiers and civilians and run up a bill well in excess of $500 billion.

This is part of the legacy that President Bush bequeaths his successor, whoever that is, on November 4. To that we can add a national debt that defies human comprehension (more than $10 trillion), a centralization of power within the president’s office that would horrify America’s founding fathers and a brutalization of the American psyche such that torture and illegal detention no longer count as news.

That’s why, even until recently, I didn’t think it really mattered who became the next president. Whoever won — John McCain or Barack Obama — would have little choice other than to labour under the dark shadow of Bush’s record, to deal with the long-term fallout of his policies and decisions.

I no longer feel that way. It’s now clear that John McCain represents a danger to America — and, by extension, Canada and the rest of the world — that far outweighs any fear and dismay that accompanied the election of Bush eight years ago.

If I’m late in coming to this realization, that’s partly because it’s not always easy to get a glimpse of the “real” McCain. Perhaps more than any other American politician, McCain has been successful in creating his own narrative.

McCain’s biography is now well-established: his service, captivity and torture in Vietnam; his entry into politics in the 1980s; his slip in judgment as a member of the “Keating Five” in which he accepted money for political favours; his “rebirth” as an active opponent of pork-barrel politics; and his metamorphosis into a “maverick” after losing out to Bush in the 2000 presidential race.

As with all political mythology, much of this is superficially true. Beneath that truth, however, there lurks another reality that McCain has been careful to obscure.

McCain’s opposition to political lobbying and “earmarks” similarly masks the fact that he himself was heavily engaged in both activities for much of his career. As a Navy lobbyist to the U.S. senate in the 1970s, for example, McCain at one point secured more than $2 billion from the federal government for projects that would never see the light of day, precisely the kind of wasteful spending he now campaigns against.

McCain’s maverick reputation is also overstated. At the very least, it’s a reputation that any number of American politicians could also claim, since bipartisan co-operation and cross-party voting are the lifeblood of the U.S. Congress. Instead, McCain has flip-flopped on virtually every major issue over the past two decades. “Far from… an unflinching maverick with a consistent and reliable record,” one reporter commented recently, “McCain has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to taking whatever position will advance his own career.”

Indeed, McCain has undergone a complete transformation over the past year or so. Gone is the politician who stood up to Bush’s proposal to torture detainees, opposed tax cuts to the rich, supported financial deregulation, advocated diplomatic engagement with enemy regimes and approved of gay marriage. In his place is a man who has reversed his position on each of these issues.

That McCain should place personal ambition ahead of principled consistency hardly makes him unique. Yet in his case, there is reason to fear just where his presidency will lead America and the world.

For one thing, he continues to view U.S. foreign policy and military action through the lens of Vietnam, a war that America fought and lost more than three decades ago. Given his own experience in that war, perhaps this is inevitable, but the idea that current and future conflicts should be fought with one eye on avenging the failure and loss of honour suffered in Vietnam should be cause for alarm.

Second, at 72 years of age, McCain knows that his odds of seeing out a full term in office are statistically no better than fifty-fifty. With time against him, the temptation to act sooner than later in order to leave his mark on America may be too great to resist, regardless of the wisdom of that action.

Finally, although McCain was badly beaten by Bush in 2000, and despite the fact that he has distanced himself from the past eight years of Republican rule, McCain stands to benefit from his predecessor’s actions. Bush has already done the hard work of sanctioning unpopular wars, of undermining constitutional rights and freedoms, of legitimizing torture and of dulling the American capacity for empathy. While I had imagined that the first task of the next president would be to reverse these changes, it’s highly possible that a bellicose McCain who, like Bush, sees the world in simple “us-and-them” terms might instead exploit them even further.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that McCain, if elected America’s next president, would turn out to be the benign, grandfatherly figure he sometimes portrays on television. After all, it’s all too easy to exaggerate one’s fears.