Has John McCain Annoyed America Into His Own Grave?
John McCain didn’t quite get the “will he run again?” post-election buzz that Mitt Romney is enjoying right now, though that is perhaps because he came in a full two percentage points lower than Romney’s numbers against President Barack Obama in 2012. Still, McCain definitely doesn’t inspire quite the same hatred that his running mate Sarah Palin does to this day — even though to say he’s popular would definitely be a stretch. A Public Policy Center poll in March found that John had the lowest approval rating of any senator in the country — even Republicans gave him a 55 percent disapproval rating. McCain later remarked that he believes that the poll is false, according to The Daily Kos.
“There is a bogus poll out there. I can sense the people of my state. When I travel around, which I do constantly, they like me, and I am very grateful.”
Whether or not you’re a believer in polls, John also doesn’t get a whole lot of love from the media these days either. A recent editorial by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic pondered how McCain manages to get his op-ed pieces in the likes of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal so often. After all, Friedersdorf says, name recognition alone shouldn’t make up for the poor fact-checking and grandiose statements that litter John’s constant barrage of opinion pieces.
“It isn’t that every column he writes is later disproved by events. Every so often, he gets something right (though not, I would argue, the surge, which ultimately didn’t win the Iraq War), and typically, his newspaper pronouncements are so vague, platitudinous, or nonspecific in nature that they’re effectively unfalsifiable. If there are striking or valuable insights in his oeuvre I haven’t found them. What benefits offset the costs of when he is supremely confident and dead wrong?”
Aside from his official opinion pieces, McCain’s twitter is also a source of ire for many pundits and even former supporters. A recent tweet from John gloated about the shifting views of non-interventionist Republicans to favoring military action is Iraq in the face of the growing threat of ISIS.
It's gratifying to see all these doves turn into hawks! http://t.co/oIaCzQIYIw
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) September 5, 2014
The tweet inspired an angry response from Wonkette columnist Kalili Joy Gray, who graphically tore down what she views as McCain’s constant war-mongering efforts.
“Without even reading the Washington Post story that is excellent news for John McCain, we can guess the gist of it. Finally — finally — the war boner with which John McCain was born a thousand years ago when spawned from Satan’s rotted heart is catching on, and all the Republicans are singing his “Bomb, bomb, bomb” tune, and that makes him SO happy. Gratified. Almost sated, even, except that John McCain will never be sated until he personally gets to press the red button and blow up the whole godd**ed planet.”
Still, John McCain does remain prominent if nothing else. The New York Times reported that John has spent more time on Sunday morning talk shows since 2009 than any other person in Congress, with a total of 97 appearances in the last 5 years. Based on his poll numbers, whether people are screaming or cheering at the television when he shows up is questionable.
[Image via Flickr]
