John McCain Is No George W. Bush.

   Saying that John McCain is George W. Bush is as absurd and ridiculous as it is untrue. Aside from the fact that the two were arch opponents in the hardly fought and ruthless Republican Presidential Primary in 2000 (in which McCain was falsely accused of fathering a black child out of wedlock…rumors that surfaced in the South Carolina Primary that McCain lost to Bush), McCain has been, in the words of President Bush’s former Press Secretary Ari Fleischer on Larry King Live “a thorn in our side” (the side of The Bush Administration and its agenda).

   Liberals from Michael Moore to Arianna Huffington have been repeating this talking points mantra that McCain was a Maverick in 2000 (when the Press actually did love him; at the time, McCain called the Media his “base”), but since 2000, McCain has been no Maverick. This accusation is simply false. The truth of the matter is, some of McCain’s biggest Maverick actions have been post 2000. McCain began 2001 by breaking with the Bush administration on a number of matters, including HMO reform, climate change, and gun legislation. For all simple minded thinkers; here I'd like to point out that 2001 came AFTER 2000. Then there is the McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act of 2002…I repeat 2002. To the objection of many in his own party, McCain teamed up with Democrat Russ Feingold (U.S. Senator of Wisconsin) to co-sponsor this campaign finance reform legislation. President Bush opposed the measure. By late 2003, after a trip to Iraq, McCain publicly questioned Bush’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, saying that more U.S. troops were needed in Iraq. The following year, McCain announced that he had lost confidence in Rumsfeld. I wonder, did President Bush appreciate this public criticism of the Bush Administration’s Defense Secretary during a time of war, and post 9/11? Of course not. Had McCain simply been a loyal Republican Bush soldier (as the Democrats are trying to make him out to be), he would have marched in lock step (politcally) with President Bush’s calls on troop levels, but he did not; proving he is worthy of his ‘Maverick’ title.

   In 2003, McCain and then Democrat Joe Lieberman (U.S. Senator of Connecticut) co-sponsored the Climate Stewardship Act that would have introduced a cap and trade system aimed at returning greenhouse gas emissions to 2000 levels. President Bush opposed this bi-partisan measure. Then in 2005, McCain led the so-called “Gang of 14" in the Senate, which established a compromise that preserved the ability of senators to filibuster judicial nominees, but only in "extraordinary circumstances". The compromise took the steam out of the filibuster movement, but the compromise did not eliminate filibusters of judicial nominees in all circumstances. At the time conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham railed against McCain over the airwaves for joining forces with Democrats to avoid the deployment of the so-called nuclear option (or constitutional option) over an organized use of the filibuster by Senate Democrats. Not only was McCain part of the “Gang of 14,” which would have been bad enough for the conservative base and President Bush, but he led the effort among the Republicans that joined the “Gang of 14.” The Democrats had been using the filibuster to prevent the confirmation of conservative appellate court candidates nominated by President Bush. Bush and his conservative base wanted an up or down vote on these candidates, and McCain goes ahead, and with this compromise, prevents it. Does the phrase “Thorn in our side” come to mind?

   Also in 2005, McCain introduced the McCain Detainee Amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill. It prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners, including prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, by confining military interrogations to the techniques in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogation. Bush threatened to veto the bill if McCain's amendment was included, (the President later begrudgingly announced that he accepted McCain's terms). Also in 2005, while The President and his administration stubbornly insisted that The U.S. was making progress in Iraq, McCain continued questioning that alleged progress. McCain remarked upon Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers’ optimistic outlook on the war's progress: "Things have not gone as well as we had planned or expected, nor as we were told by you, General Myers." In 2006, McCain criticized the Bush administration for continually understating the effectiveness of the insurgency in Iraq, saying: "We have not told the American people how tough and difficult this could be."

    In August of 2008, during a critical assessment of the Bush presidency on “Fox News Sunday,” McCain discussed the administration’s use of “waterboarding,” a technique that has been used to interrogate terrorist detainees. McCain said, "Waterboarding to me is torture, okay? And waterboarding was advocated by the administration, and according to a published report, was used," McCain said. "I obviously don't want to torture any prisoners," said McCain. So here, McCain accused Bush of advocating torture. Ah yes, Bush’s right hand man, just as Democrats are saying.

   All of this came AFTER 2000. The point is simply this: accusing John McCain of being more of the same, a clone of George W. Bush is preposterous. Yet, Democrats continue to try and convince people that John McCain is virtually identical to Bush. Saying that John McCain is George Bush is like saying that Barack Obama is a Muslim: It’s simply not true. It’s dishonest. And people know better. Barack Obama knows better than to say McCain is Bush. In his victory speech after winning the South Carolina Primary, Obama told a crowd of supporters, “We are up against the idea that it’s acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election. We know that this is exactly what’s wrong with our politics; this is why people don’t believe what their leaders say anymore; this is why they tune out. And this election is our chance to give the American people a reason to believe again.” Then during his acceptance speech of the Democratic Presidential Nomination in Denver, Obama said “the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but, really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than 90 percent of the time?” If Obama doesn’t believe it’s okay to say anything to get elected, why is he saying something he knows is misleading? What does that say about his judgment? Perhaps it’s because he’s trying to get elected, and he knows that persuading voters to believe his opponent is a twin to an unpopular president is a sure fire way to do that.

            There’s a reason it took tapping Sarah Palin to be his Vice Presidential running mate to get conservative republicans energized about McCain; it’s because McCain has bucked his party and president so many times, they don’t even trust him anymore. It’s because he actually is a Maverick. Ask Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh how they felt about the GOP Presidential ticket before Palin. Ask them how they felt about McCain during his co-sponsoring of “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Legislation” with Ted Kennedy just last year. The truth of the matter is Obama would be hard pressed to find any other member of the United States Senate that has been as consistently independent and a Maverick as has John McCain. And that’s a fact. I’m not saying McCain hasn’t changed positions or flip flopped on certain issues, because he has (Tax Cuts being the most obvious example). But the reality is, John McCain is no partisan. He wasn’t before 2000, and he wasn’t after 2000. He isn’t now. If he were, Joe Liberman (Al Gore’s Vice Presidential Running Mate on the 2000 Democratic Ticket) wouldn’t have spoken on behalf of him at this year’s Republican Convention. Just for a moment consider the inverse of that. That would be like Dick Cheney speaking in support of Obama at the Democratic Convention.

            If Obama and Democrats believe John McCain isn’t the right person to be President, they should make their case fairly and honestly. Make the case why McCain is wrong on the issues (as they believe he is), and then let voters decide if they agree. But to try and win by convincing voters that McCain is something that he isn’t (a Bush Clone) is simply the wrong way to win. It flies in the face of everything Obama has been preaching since he got into this race. It’s the ‘old politics’ Obama decries. During this campaign, Obama has been saying it’s not just important to win, but to win for the right reasons. If that’s true, he needs to make his case to the American people in an honest and fair way: he needs to stop perpetuating this myth that McCain is George W. Bush, because he isn’t.