West Wing actors blow John McCain's cover

Did John McCain vote for George Bush?

Well that's not what he told Josh and Toby from The West Wing. Seriously.

The blogger and socialite Arianna Huffington posted on her blog a few days ago that at a small dinner party in LA just after the 2000 election McCain told startled guests that he didn't like Bush, didn't trust him and hadn't voted for him.

At this stage of proceedings I should think this was a good story for McCain. His people, however, have denied it vehemently. His close aide Mark Salter had this to say about Ms Huffington:

She’s a flake and a poser and an attention-seeking diva

Enter Josh Lyman and Toby Ziegler.

For it turns out that actors Bradley Whitford (Josh) and Richard Schiff (Toby) were both present at the dinner and, at the request of Arianna Huffington, have issued statements.

Here's Josh:

McCain was just sort of going off on how much he disliked Bush and the horrible things that the Bush campaign had done to his family in South Carolina, and his exasperation with Bush about his ridiculous tax cuts and he really wanted to talk to him about it, but he said the guy doesn’t have the concentration, and you talk for 10 minutes and then the guy wants to talk about baseball,” Mr. Whitford said.

Another guest then asked Mr. McCain, Mr. Whitford recalled, whether he had voted for Mr. Bush. “And he put his finger in front of his mouth and mouthed, ‘No way,’ ” Mr. Whitford said.

And here's Toby:

Someone asked, ‘What do you think of Bush?’ ” Mr. Schiff recalled. “My recollection, and I have to qualify this, because I’m not 100 percent sure he used this word, but my recollection is that McCain said that Bush was dangerous and he didn’t trust him.

Then this person said, ‘Why did you support him?’ And McCain said, ‘It was my obligation as a Republican to support the Republican candidate.’ And the person said, ‘Did you vote for him?’ And McCain said, ‘No.’

Now Mark Salter has replied to the actor with this statement:

He voted for George Bush; I know it for dead certitude

This is not, however, a denial.

Josh and Toby are not saying that McCain did not vote for Bush. How could they possibly know that? They are saying that he told a starry liberal Hollywood dinner party, who wanted him to dislike Bush, that he didn't vote for Bush, which is a quite different thing.

Strangely enough, McCain emerges stronger from the Huffington version of the story than from the denial issued by Salter.

Comments

[elizabeth schumann]

Arina Stassinopoulos Huffington IS a flake, a poseuse AND an attention-seeking diva. She's also a fake blonde, but aren't we almost all... Case closed!!

[McCain is WELL SERVED by this]

If Hillary steals the nomination, I'll vote Mc Cain; he's always been Maverick/Independant & I know he's always despised The Moron-In-Chief. Arizona John can no more forget savaging attacks from the 1st Dubya Campaign than he could selectively blot out years of torture as a POW ... George W. Bush has been, is now & will be forever historically noted as a vicious buffoon puppet of Halliburton, Inc.

The GREATER TRADGEDY is that The American Electorate chose an idiot TWICE when they could have opted for a sentient intellect!

[Jacq]

So, either he didn't vote for Bush, or he lied about not voting for Bush.

[Joyce Carr]

With all the posturing of all the candidates, it would be wise for Americans to consider which is more important, which "side" you support, or how we will become one nation and begin to solve our problems.

There is so mud-slinging from the lot of you, but no fundamental suggestions for solving some of the problems that threaten to destroy not just America, but our very existence...do any of you know how to think or are you only capable of trash talk.

Take care that you don't repeat the same mistakes you made the last few decades...when a political party affiliation becomes more important than the people of the country. Such a people get what they deserve...more ego-centric political leadership and not what it needs - leadership with a brain and compassion. Where are yours?

[Julie H.]

Let's see, after 10 minutes of talking GWB moves the conversation to baseball. That's a classic conversational move when someone doesn't want to talk, or talk more, about a subject. Everyone knows that. I voted for GWB both times and I'm not sorry I did. The USA was going to become involved in war in the middle east, it was just a matter of when and where. Iraq may not have been the obvious first choice but how can any country with a conscience stand by while a diabolical dictator slaughters his own countrymen? Iran, as well, has been percolating for decades and has always been much more of a hot spot than any other country in that area. I fully expect to hear on the news one morning that we are going to go to war against Iran. Would it be the wrong thing to do? Do we stand by and let Iran influence Syria, Turkey and the rest to become united in a nuclear strangle-hold on the world?

[Julie H.]

Besides, Arianna Huffington is a boor with an incredibly over-inflated opinion of herself.

[Juan A]

Elizabeth Schumann, why McCain? Nader is a much better choice, even than Obama.

[Juan A]

Ooops, my previous comment was actually directed to "McCain is WELL SERVED by this", not to Elizabeth. Sorry.

[agitpropre]

Julie H. writes:
"how can any country with a conscience stand by while a diabolical dictator slaughters his own countrymen?".

Oh, Julie, please! America has been doing that for decades. It did that, in fact, with Saddam Hussein for many years, after it helped install him as dictator. You voted for the worst president ever, twice. Congratulations and thanks for all the carnage.

[vman]

Have you guys not thought about the Constitution Party? Just a thought. No, it won't be a throw away vote. It might prove a point to both of the knuckle headed parties that think it's about them. Go to their URL and see if their views agree with yours.

[Marc]

Nice to see that the KKK takes time out to post their comments!

[sweeetback]

Can only see this as being good for mccain if he wants to distance himself from bush - unofficially that is!

[Thomas]

The clip above, demonstrates something that many, if not most people seem to ignore in politics and policy. How things actually get done, is significantly different than how we tend to think they get done.

While I'm not at all sure that going into Iraq was a "good" gamble, it is fairly easy, with a bit of thought, to understand the rationale behind the decision. Only history will answer the "good" question...and that not for at least a number of decades, I think.

In a nutshell, its because we could. Making war, for the USA, is an action that absolutely requires the support of the majority of the people. Our national identity rests in large part, on being "the good guys".

Before going into the how though, consideration needs to be given as to the why of it. The answer to that one is economics. In the long run, prevention is cheaper than amelioration. By and large, prosperous countries don't attack their neighbors. They are too busy going to work and paying for their stuff, to do so. Poverty and desperation are what drive humans to do things that they would not otherwise. Poor people, can be easily whipped into an angry frenzy, and manipulated into acting aggressively upon others, whom they perceive as the "reason" for their troubles.

Most people in the Middle East are desperately poor. And their leaders have little incentive to better their lot. After all, the wealth that is there, doesn't require much in the way of participation of the populace. The oil is in the ground. And the relative few who control it, don't need the general population to get it out and turn it into purchasing power. That is handled by we, who buy it from them. The human capital of those nations is not just wasted, but actively suppressed.

Contrast that with nations like Japan, which is poor in natural resources, but wealthy nevertheless, because they must rely on their human capital to prosper. Or India, which is improving its human resources as quickly as it can, with the result of incredible growth.

Most people in the Middle East, don't believe that Western style prosperity really even exists. It is outside their experience of reality.

The gamble is this. If we manage to plop a big dollop of prosperity into their midst, where they can see and experience for themselves, that the common people can share in what has been for them, only for the lucky select few, then we turn off the ability of those few, to wage carnage on the rest of us.

That being said, its a big IF. Nation-building is always messy and expensive. To get to a self-sustaining model takes at least a generation. Its kind of surprising to me, that so many folks seem to ignore the history of that completely. Thirty years after the founding of the USA, we still had strongmen trying to carve off a piece, as with the Whiskey Rebellion.

A benchmark I use personally, in thinking about it, is a highway interchange that is being built in my area. Construction was started about the same time we went into Iraq. Five years later, the project is right on schedule, and about half finished. Traffic has been switched a number of times to continue function, while doing the rebuilding. But, on the whole, it is already much better than it was, and will be very nice when it is finished. And this is without anyone trying to blow it up while it is still being built. How folks expect that an entire nation and its infrastructure can or should be finished being rebuilt, in less time than doing one highway interchange is slightly ridiculous to me. Nevertheless, that is the context, within which the politics of such things operate.

Picking Iraq, was a fairly straightforward decision, I believe. Consider the points in favor.

Saddam Hussein was our creation.... Our mess to clean up.

Iraq was already the most secular Middle East nation, and therefore stands a decent chance of stablizing in such a way as to keep the various religious factions from seeing violence as a viable road to their own dominance of the others.

Iraq had the fourth or fifth largest standing army on the planet. Beating them militarily is the equivalent of besting the biggest bully on the playground.

Iraq already had 18 UN Resolutions against it. The US could act there, relatively unilaterally, without having to convince anyone to join in, as they were all already on record as having sanctioned it, for practical purposes. Major players were already hobbled by their own parts in the Oil for Food scandal which could be held over their heads as personal brakes to protesting too much.

Despite not finding any WMDs, the threat was credible, as world-wide intelligence confirmed that Saddam had had, and had used them already, on his own people, the Kurds. He could have stopped us short, simply by demonstrating that he had either destroyed the ones he had, or allowing full inspections to determine to everyone's satisfaction that he was not continuing to development. This is not unlike someone robbing a convenience store with his hand in his pocket. The assumption that he has a gun is justifiable, unless and until he removes it to show only a finger. Once he does, no court will uphold shooting him down. Until he does, most courts would allow that though.

The attack on the World Trade Center, provided a window of opportunity, through which the American People could be convinced to do something as drastic as wage a war. That it did not come directly from Iraq is just about beside the point. The fear it engendered is the point. And I'm certain that the decision was made with much more regard to that window of opportunity and its relatively quick closing, much more than with regard to getting the particular group responsible for the attack. The chunking-up of the whole idea of a war between ideologies, rather than a war between nations is what is key here.

Iraq already had one of the larger Middle Classes in the area. Creating s climate where a Middle Class can operate with some security and stability, would allow for a much faster return to equlibrium, than one where the majority of people had no experience with any kind of wealth at all, and would naturally view those who do with suspicion and as elites. Remember, the idea that wealth can be earned and deserved, by working for it, and protected by the rule of law, rather than simply the luck of birth or the vagaries of whim by those who already possess it, is a fairly subtle concept. In most of the world, the concept of owning one's self, is not taken as the natural right that we in the West so casually assume.

It is no accident that the West is overall more prosperous. A rule of law and especially property rights are the very foundations, that allow capital pooling and all the other tools of cooperation that mass prosperity require. Otherwise the drag and expense of defending what one already has, hinders the acculmulations of necessary capital formation, that can be relatively safely "risked" to create more wealth, infrastructure, and productivity.

In all wars, that are not merely the conquest and decimation of an entire culture, there are two very different phases. There is the fighting. And there is the reconstruction. With WWII there was the Marshall Plan. With the US Civil War, there was the Southern Reconstruction. This one is no different. The rebuilding always takes more time and a huge amount of reconciliation and healing, that typically continues for generations after the conflict portion.

The leadership and mindset for each part also differ. No set of generals in place before a war, is the same as at the relative conclusion. And we have different sorts of people elected to office during these differing times as well.

Anyone who takes the time and effort to understand Systems Theory and Chaos Theory, understands that all human change is messy. As the systems themselves change in response to conditions, much of what was perhaps considered stable and settled, becomes unsettled and frankly scary. People like to be able to predict what will happen. And in the absence of that, they prefer at least the feeling of knowing the demons they face. Uncertainty, whether based in real or imagined events, is one of the greatest fears for most of us humans. And we can never really know what the effects of anything will be, until they happen.

A few of the good things I see happening these days though, are a national focus on getting off our oil addiction. The price of oil was going to rise regardless, as supply and demand control that, and India and China are growing at paces far exceeding that of the US in its heyday. And yeah, that is not going to be pretty either. The Ethanol boondoggle comes to mind... But, for the first time in recent history, our fear of nuclear power is being countered by the very real change in our personal cost/benefit equations regarding energy use. The use of much safer and environmentally friendly brilliant pebbles reactors, for which we already have a developed and mature distribution infrastructure built for, will serve us long into the future.

At three bucks a gallon for gasoline, it becomes profitable to tap into the tremendous reserves of oil we do have domestically, which are in tar sands.

If and when our Iraq gambit comes to fruitiion, there will be much more impetus for the current Middle East Oligarchies to undergo the sort of Velvet Revolutions that characterized the dissassembly of the former Soviet Union nations. And relative Meritocracies are shown by history to be both more peaceful and more prosperous. The various flavors of that though, can only arise when and where there is a rule of law, rather than a rule of men.

It almost doesn't matter which person we elect to become the next POTUS. They, like everyone else will respond to whatever changing conditions arise in whatever unpredictable ways, and the system itself will adjust. Politics is not the driving force of the American system. It is a symptom. And that system is made up of the distributed intelligence of the American public. We may want to stop and consider that any sense of unfairness or outrage within our system, is rooted in the fact that we live in a time and place where we feel safe enough, and entitled enough, to grouse about it, right here in public. We own ourselves. Won't it be great when everyone owns themselves?

[Sarah]

What the? This news came out MONTHS ago!!!

[Omolara]

Americans voted well for Al-gore but Bush stole their votes. The bottom line is, McCaine might have voted for Bush and lied about it; or he may simply have hated the buffoon.

[Neil McAlester]

"Our national identity rests in large part, on being "the good guys"."

You national identity rests,in large part, on you thinking that you are the good guys.

[Jake]

Julie H - "Iraq may not have been the obvious first choice but how can any country with a conscience stand by while a diabolical dictator slaughters his own countrymen?"
In exactly the same way the US stood by when Saddam slaughtered the Kurds after Gulf War I, in exactly the same way as in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Burma/Myanmar, Zimbabwe.... As Neil McAlester said, the US genuinely believes that they are the good guys. There may be many good individuals in the US, but there are far too few amongst your rulers.
Voting for GWB twice, Julie H? You have aided and abetted genocide and rapacious greed on a global scale. If you do not regret those votes, I do hope someone has the good sense to prevent you from voting in the future, but in the meantime, as (hopefully less than) 50% of your countrymen anchor their self-understanding and self-belief in the Republican party and it's evangelical proxies, God help us all.

[donquijoterocket]

As usual a goodly number of the posts here well illustrate Winston Churchill's assertion that " the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter". It's probably a good thing Mr. Churchill is not here to see the result of so many below average voters.As for McCain's carefully cultivated and media reinforced image as a "maverick" or an independent agent check out how much of the time he aligns with the neocon faction and ask yourself which of his multitude of stances that he's reversed himself on brands him as a true maverick or independent agent.About the only position he's taken so far that I really believe is that he'd have no compunction about leaving our troops in the meat grinder for another 100 years.He's clearly bush lite, and I'm not so sure how lite. Who could blame him for not voting for the boy warrior prince after the savaging he and his family took at the hands of the Rove inspired attacks in 2000. I'm just not up for four more years of the same failed policies and even should McCain triumph in the general election I'm not sure how well he'd function with what will most likely be a congress with a veto-proof Democratic majority and there are so many problems that need addressed we do not need the stalemate that would result therefrom.

[Frank]

The flaw in Thomas' wonderful analysis of the Iraq debacle is where he uses the phrase 'We own ourselves'. Yes, Americans own themselves, but they do not own Iraqis. America allowed conquered Germany and Jpan to own themselves but treated Iraq with utter contempt, as if was a ripe fruit ready for picking rather than a worthy adversary. Now that it is taken more seriously, the political battle has already been lost.

[Patrick]

I think Mark Salter may well be telling the truth - it may be indeed that McCain voted for George Bush, but not this one - the father George Bush Sr.

[Patrick]

I think Mark Salter may well be telling the truth - it may be indeed that McCain voted for George Bush, but not this one - the father George Bush Sr.

[Dan]

The flaw in Franks rebuttal of Thomas' wonderful analogy is that we do own what we've paid for in Iraq, with American blood, and that is the right to stay there until the situation is rectified.

[steve]

Dear Julie: Can you tell us why the US hasn't invaded Zimbabwe if it's the right thing to intervene militarily in sovereign states that are ruled by dictators who are destroying their own people? I really hope you will think about this and realise the logic of what you are saying. Dictatorship fell in the former Soviet Union without invasion and fascism fell in South Africa without invasion. Yes, there are obvious problems in those countries but there has been change. And anyway, how is the US going to sustain military intervention in so many places all at the same time? There are lots of dictatorships around. Maybe invasion isn't the best strategy?

[akarmenia1]

Why do I care about what a bunch of elitist Hollywood actors and actresses are reporting about John McCain? I never did understand why actors and singers get a political stage when those who have at least a tiny bit of knowledge on the subject just get brushed aside by the media.

[Daniel Wood Perth Western Australia]

You voted in a war mongerer twice, do you want to vote in another one?? McCain said he would keep your troops in Iraq for another 100 years if that's what it takes, you would think that comment alone would give you a pretty good indication as to where you should cast your votes, you reap what you sow.

[pat]

Thomas, who's the biggest bully in the playground?