The conventional wisdom holds that John McCain should lean to his right in making his choice for a vice presidential candidate. This wisdom is completely wrong. Most of the names being bandied about would make terrible choices for McCain. I don't claim to be a political expert in the manner of Dick Morris, but I think the best choice for McCain would be Colin Powell.
Yes, Colin Powell. And here are the reasons why. First, Powell has an independent mind. He is not a captive of the right, and consequently he reinforces the public perception that McCain is not a pawn of Bush. True, Powell served in the Bush administration, but his disagreements with Bush are well known. Obama is trying to portray McCain as a Bush clone. Powell will help McCain convince independent voters--the ones he needs most--that his administration would not constitute a third Bush term.
Second, Powell has experience. The man has served honorably and responsibly in more high positions than Obama and all the other Democratic candidates combined. Moreover, Powell has gravitas while Obama merely has the gift of the gab. So Powell helps to highlight how green and goofy Obama really is. The point is not to contrast one African American with another, or to show how Powell like Obama has immigrant roots. Rather, it is to dissolve the race issue by showing that capability and experience, not race and skin color, are the real issues here.
Finally, who apart from the Obamorons can doubt that Powell would make a capable president? This is especially important given the fact that McCain is over seventy. A Powell choice would also reinforce the big question about the man at the top of the Democratic ticket: Is he ready? I am not going to say that Obama can never be a good president, but I seriously doubt that he is mature enough to climb into the saddle. Who would you trust--Powell or Obama--to better handle a national emergency?
Now all of this could be idle speculation, because Powell may not want to be vice president. I keep hearing about how his wife is so completely against the idea. But this could be one of McCain's first tasks: to persuade Powell to do it. This wouldn't be the first time that this soldier has been asked to put personal considerations second and to take on a great challenge for the future of his country.
Reader Comments ( Page 3 of 13)
31. First of I want to wish all fathers a belated Happy Fathers Day. Hope all dads had a great time!
Secondly I'd like to mention the AOL article on the historians who seem to think McCain won't win no matter who he picks as VP. I find it interesting. I am also thinking that Powell will not want the VP ticket seeing as how he resigned due to how badly the war was handled and how it seems Mccain will do no better in how he regards intelligent information that will be handed to him.
Example, if it is already known that the insurgents of Iraq are nothing more than the homeless, hungry civilians that are attacking American troops why did McCain regard them as Al Qaeda who are being supported by Iran? Using this false information to go into Iran will result in Bush 3 term and Powell might want nothing to do with it.
As far as getting out of Iraq now I am a liberal who doesn't think ending the war now will do any good. As much as I would love to bring the troops home Iraq is destroyed with over 5 million children left orphaned and we must take accountability to what we have done to these civilians.
We must help rebuilt the schools and help these children receive proper care and education so that they might not grow into American hating adults who join terrorist organizations.
Remember, they also believe they have been abandoned by god due to their lack of faith and that will only push them into the extreme view of Islam creating a vicious cycle of hate against America. If we truly want to end terrorism and extreme fundamental Islam we must stay and help educate these children.
goddess1prevail at 10:49AM on Jun 16th 2008
32. Goddess - Your make-believe version of what is happening now in Iraq needs a reality-check. Try talking to one of our finest that have been to Iraq recently and your view may change.
Dave at 11:04AM on Jun 16th 2008
33. Powell went before the UN and put the case for attacking Iraq over wmds. When it turned out that there were none it means either powell lied or he was duped by king gorge. If he was lied to he should have resigned but instead he hung around with bush and his bandits. A man of integrity? I don't think so.
Geoff Barker at 11:11AM on Jun 16th 2008
34. Dave,
In regard to post 23
Since people are being tortured and maimed all over the world as we speak why don’t we just go ahead and finish the job of ruining the economy by removing every world leader engaged in this activity. Except for those currently engaged in this activity on our behalf that is (rendition).
It is the few of you diehard neocons (you are clearly not a conservative) who are greatly deflating the number of Iraqi’s killed and the number of US soldiers maimed for life. And why the fuck should we care where the money on the Iraq war is going and who is getting it (Blackwater, Halliburton). Its money above and beyond the peacetime military budget that is being spent in a war we had no business starting and actually siphoning money from our legitimate operations in Afghanistan.
Speaking of Afghanistan, you forget sir, that Bush had high approval numbers in the ninety percentile after 9/11 and that the great majority of us were all behind kicking some major ass in Afghanistan but then Monkey Boy had to go off in a tangent and attack a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and as time wore on we began to realize that by god we had a genuine moron in the Whitehouse. Iraq is the reason why Osama Bin Laden is still taunting us with his videos instead desiccating in an unmarked grave and yet the decider “don’t spend too much time thinking on that.”
I’ve asked it before and I will ask it again: How bad must a president with his party in the majority in congress fuck up before you guys wake up? Where is the accountability for fucking up on such a massive scale and dividing the country in the process.
Whatever class and independence McVainly-seeking-the-presidency may have once had, has slowly and spectacularly evaporated by his own intense desire to become president coupled with his ideological beat down at the hands of Karl Roves via dirty tricks and the constant barrage of neocon attacks, in short, it’s almost the Hanoi Hilton all over again.
It’s a certainty that the Democrats will reap huge rewards this November and I as a Democrat myself promise to hold my party accountable if they begin to show signs of fucking up as badly as the Republicans have by holding my nose and voting Republican in at least one election cycle as I have in the past. Too bad there are still too many Republican citizens refusing to hold their party accountable.
rabidmccain at 11:16AM on Jun 16th 2008
35. "How Life Began”
“Was life triggered by some event, like lightning hitting a pond full of amino acids? Earth was teeming with life billions of years before the dinosaurs existed. Single-celled organisms inundated the oceans, and the soil swarmed with living creatures. Where did it all come from and how do you go from a single-celled organism to a
trillion-celled organism like Man? Cutting-edge science is testing out answers about life's origins and how life can be created on new worlds--or even our own.”
The History Channel
Tonight Monday
9pm Eastern
Check your local listings
WWW.history.com
rabidmccain at 4:26PM on Jun 16th 2008
36. It makes little difference who McCain picks, he has no wins. I think Obama will go with Rendell or Webb
Jerry Brown at 11:18AM on Jun 16th 2008
37. Colin (not Colon) Powell is not trusted by the majority of americans due to the intelligence snafu he willingly took part of. If he is so stupid that he did not know the intelligence was bad then it means that he is either incompetent or a liar. If he thought the Bushies were lying he should have stood up and said no. He didnt. Now we want to give him a higher office???? Albiet a non-important one.
And goddess has a point about the education of the children over there. Killing them wont prevent terrorism, it will create more. Educating them may prevent more terrorism, however we will spend billions protecting the teachers, keeping the infrastructure operating and losing to corruption in their government and ours.
McCain/Powell=continued war
Obama/Mr. x=maybe a shortened war, no one can predict.
CaptainCack at 11:26AM on Jun 16th 2008
38. I thought that the goofy little fellow who was wrestling with Satan would be Dinesh's choice for VP.
Ed W. at 11:41AM on Jun 16th 2008
39.
The real McCain...and one more reason to understand why he is a fraud.
...And yet despite his popularity as a politician, there are those who won’t forget his treatment of his first wife.
Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: ‘I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit.
‘When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it. ‘Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better. ‘This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it all belonged to Carol.’
One old friend of the McCains said: ‘Carol always insists she is not bitter, but I think that’s a defence mechanism. She also feels deeply in his debt because in return for her agreement to a divorce, he promised to pay for her medical care for the rest of her life.’ Carol remained resolutely loyal as McCain’s political star rose. She says she agreed to talk to The Mail on Sunday only because she wanted to publicise her support for the man who abandoned her.
But Ross Perot, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel – even by the standards of modern politics. ‘McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory,’ he said. ‘After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.’
The entire article is here
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html
T.Brough at 11:50AM on Jun 16th 2008
40. Quoth BUGS BUNNY:
"What a bunch of Maroons!"
All- your depth of understanding here is sad. Colin Powell is too smart to get tarred with that political brush, remember- smart people don't run FOR office, they run FROM it.
Goddess- Luv ya Babe, but your depth of knowedge in matters Biblical and all has crowded out all room for knowledge of political. McCain is half right, and so are you, maybe. It will take at least a full generation, about 50 years or so of concentrated effort to STABILIZE the agglomeration of tribal states that we call Iraq, if we succeed at all. The only way Saddam could was by doing the obvious- i.e. a ruthless strongman who eliminated all comers before they were a threat. You think convincing the fundamentalists on this blog to change? Try the same in a Muslim country.
And Colin Powell? He is having too much fun racing up and down the Beltway in his Porsche, taking huge payouts for consultifying and speechifying to EVER go back to the arena of politics.
Robert at 11:58AM on Jun 16th 2008
41. 32. Goddess - Your make-believe version of what is happening now in Iraq needs a reality-check. Try talking to one of our finest that have been to Iraq recently and your view may change.
Make believe version? So McCain wasn't corrected on TV for his reference of Iran funding terrorism instead of insurgents?(big difference in case you don't know). So now you assume to know above others what is really going on? For your info many of our finest are also torn with the war incase you haven't notice, or do you choose to ignore those finest who oppose it? Fact is who ever is chosen as the New President should be well informed about the war number one rule being to "know thy enemy", not assume who our enemies are as McCain does or Bush did as he didn't historically know the difference between Shiites and Sunnis. Or do you deny that the terrorist came from Saudi and the funds from Pakistan?
My view was we had the technology and the intell to have disposed of Saddam many years ago and without an all out war. But since it is too late to retract what was done we must now stay and help pay for the reconstruction of a country in hopes that it does not turn to extreme Islam by properly nurturing and educating the 5million orphaned children.
goddess1prevail at 12:23PM on Jun 16th 2008
42. Robert,
It is harder to convince an adult than children and right now it is those children who will grow up one day and hate America if we don't help them. Its a vicious cycle....
goddess1prevail at 12:27PM on Jun 16th 2008
43. Goddess-
Again, you are half right. That the "terrorists" came from S.A. and funds from "Pakistan" are true- as far as we can see on the face of the issue.
Flash forward.
Witness how we were led down the primrose path to war with a country that has allegedly something like the Eighth largest proven oil reserves world-wide.
Back to Colin. He bailed because he WAS duped into looking like a fool at the UN. Or he knew, and finally got back in tune with his conscience. At any rate, dear Colin is just following the corporate Status Quo, without the burden of being affiliated with a political party. Admirable? No, but at least he is being honest about it.
Robert at 12:34PM on Jun 16th 2008
44. Goddess- I know (hope) you are not that naive. A noble thought, that, helping the children and all but- look around, making people SMARTER is BAD FOR BUSINESS. Where's the profit in a Care package of rice? Guns and bombs are so much more lucrative. And oil? I know you've been to the gas pumps recently...
Robert at 12:38PM on Jun 16th 2008
45. hey Brough; If what Sampley says is accurate, and I have no reason to doubt it, then I say that's enough to throw McCain under the bus. But why wasn't Bill Clinton pilloried for the same womanizing? Why were there busloads of women literally panting after the great white stud? Why was the liberal media telling us it was just sex and wouldn't affect his oval office judgement; the very place some of it went on? Oh yeah; Hillary didn't walk with a limp.
fanman at 12:41PM on Jun 16th 2008