New York Times' Voter Suppression: Don't Vote for John McCain

The New York Times continues to hammer away at John McCain.

Last weekend, its wrath was directed at Mrs. Cindy McCain, in a deplorable hit piece.

Today's Times includes two analyses of John McCain, both warning American voters not to vote for him. More importantly, both instruct readers not to bother to vote for McCain.

In other words, vote for Barack Obama, the incredibly inexperienced candidate with the remarkably flimsy resume, the arrogant, condescending, most liberal U.S. senator currently in office. It's a lock. He's the next president of the United States. Back the winner. Move on.

First, David D. Kirkpatrick's "John McCain, Flexible Aggression"--

Senator John McCain races through the final days of the presidential race reciting a familiar admonition. It is the same mantra he has called upon to steel himself for moments of conflict as a collegiate boxer at the Naval Academy, a prisoner of war bracing for interrogation, a legislator twisting arms for votes, or as a Republican primary candidate rallying crowds against an all-but-certain defeat.

"All-but-certain defeat"?

Kirkpatrick is talking like it's Nov. 4, and the polls on the West coast are about to close.

Good grief.

“Game face on!” he murmurs to himself, borrowing the advice of so many athletic coaches.

Some friends say the expression is a metaphor for an essential tension that runs through Mr. McCain’s life. He is often deliberative, self-critical and flexible, his advisers and fellow senators say, and has frequently corrected course during his 36 years in public life. “He is a much more supple mind than he is usually portrayed,” said Philip Bobbitt, an international relations scholar and Democrat the senator consulted this summer.

But when he confronts an adversary, a starkly different John McCain can emerge, fired up with certainty for an all-or-nothing battle. “I am going to win this thing and you are going to have to run me over to defeat me,” said former Senator Bob Kerrey, a Democrat close to Mr. McCain, explaining his friend’s attitude. “It is a face that makes his opponent think, ‘I don’t know if I want to get my nose bloodied by this guy.’ ”

The conflicting impulses toward deliberation and aggression have been the alternating currents of his singular career and, if Mr. McCain wins the White House, could shape his presidency.

"Conflicting impulses," "deliberation and aggression."

Kirkpatrick depicts McCain as a man at war with himself, and not a good way.

He doesn't consider these "conflicting impulses" to be signs of a complex man, thoughtful and determined. No, the one time darling of the lib media, McCain is now depicted as a risky choice for the presidency.

...Driven as much by his notion of honor as by ideology, Mr. McCain could make an unpredictable — his critics say “erratic” — chief executive.

Count Barack Obama and Joe Biden and John Kerry in the "erratic" column.

More from Kirkpatrick:

Mr. McCain made plenty of enemies. In confrontations, he could explode in profanity, bolt from meetings in rage, or order other lawmakers out of the room. He says he sometimes uses his explosive temper tactically, to intimidate opponents. But he left enough bruises that Democrats had sheaves of old quotes from fellow Republicans about his volatile temper at the ready when he ran for president.

...In his 2000 presidential run, he campaigned as an anti-politician. He denounced pork-barrel spending, made campaign finance rules the centerpiece of his agenda, and railed against the influence of special interests in Washington. He opened his bus to the press and mocked the idea of “message discipline.”

And though for years he had played down his prison ordeal (“I don’t want to be the P.O.W. senator,” Mr. McCain once told a reporter. “I don’t think it made any change in my basic character”), he began talking about it as a more formative experience. Echoing his 1999 autobiography, “Faith of My Fathers,” Mr. McCain described Vietnam as the crucible that taught him the importance of dedication to a cause greater than himself — a formulation that became his campaign theme.

This time around, Mr. McCain — still the “maverick” — has variously run as anointed front-runner, then cash-strapped long shot, and finally a battle-tested “fighter” out to change Washington. In the final rounds of his campaign against Senator Barack Obama, his Democratic rival, Mr. McCain is again in full game face.

His campaign has pelted his rival with attacks that make some of his old advisers wince, like questioning Mr. Obama’s patriotism or tying him to “a domestic terrorist.” He made a high-stakes bet on a telegenic but untested running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, with no qualms about leading the charge.

If the election were a contest to hold your breath under water, “you would be giving John McCain mouth to mouth before he would let Obama win,” said his friend, former Senator Kerrey.

At times, Mr. McCain’s confidence in the righteousness of his own cause may blind him to contradictions. He bashes lobbyists as “birds of prey” but hires a staff of former or “on leave” lobbyists to run his campaign. (While attacking the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Mr. McCain was recently embarrassed by the disclosure that until their collapse this summer they had been paying big monthly fees to the government relations firm of his campaign manager, Rick Davis.)

Mr. McCain promises to avoid even the appearance of impropriety or official favors. But around the start of his 2000 race, he wrote a letter of recommendation and arranged a Pentagon meeting to help a big donor win two lucrative California land deals. At the same time, several top advisers were warning him to keep his distance from a female lobbyist because the two appeared overly friendly, two participants in those conversations said.

There you have it. That's it in a nutshell. That's the Times incredibly biased assessment of John McCain.

This reads like stuff from the Obama campaign. It's dishonest, guilty by the sin of omission.

In more reflective moments, Mr. McCain says he tries to maintain a stoic detachment about the prospect of victory or defeat, a habit of mind he says he acquired as Navy pilot and prisoner of war. “I tend to be fatalistic about these things,” he said in an interview not long after he had locked up the Republican nomination, shrugging off his success.

The son and grandson of four-star admirals, Mr. McCain wrestles publicly with the burdens of trying to live up to their standards of both accomplishment and honor. Contemplating his first run at the White House, he worried about balancing his ambition for the prize with his own sense of virtue, he wrote in “Worth the Fighting For.”

After his loss, he professed himself grateful, at the age of 65, for what might be left of his time. “I did not get to be president of the United States. And I doubt I shall have reason or opportunity to try again,” he wrote, but added, “I might yet become the man I always wanted to be.”

Kirkpatrick concludes with an obituary of McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

In my opinion, Kirkpatrick seems to have a problem with premature declaration.

If Kirkpatrick's piece wasn't enough to satisfy the voracious appetites of members of the anti-McCain contingent, there's more.

The New York Times Magazine is devoted to pushing Obama on to victory.

Last weekend, the cover of the magazine blared, "Can Obama Close the Deal with Those White Guys?"

Yes, it's those racist, "bitter clingers" who are resisting following the messiah. They are the only ones possibly standing in the way of Camelot, Obama-style.


Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Why read the article at all? The picture tells the story. It's dripping with defeat.

Robert Draper was given the pleasure of writing, "The Making (and Remaking) of McCain."

A photo accompanying the piece in the online version has the caption: "STUMPED SPEECH Sarah Palin and John McCain at the Delaware County Courthouse in Media, Pa., on Sept. 22. As late as June, one aide said, the campaign could not agree on an answer to the question 'Why elect John McCain?' "

Draper offers six narratives that he believes have marked McCain's campaign:

NARRATIVE 1: The Heroic Fighter vs. the Quitters

NARRATIVE 2: Country-First Deal Maker vs. Nonpartisan Pretender

NARRATIVE 3: Leader vs. Celebrity

NARRATIVE 4: Team of Mavericks vs. Old-Style Washington

NARRATIVE 5: John McCain vs. John McCain

NARRATIVE 6: The Fighter (Again) vs. the Tax-and-Spend Liberal

Draper's piece could be called, "Six Narratives in Search of a Candidate."

As with Kirkpatrick's article, it's an account of why McCain lost the election.

I guess the New York Times couldn't wait until every vote has been cast and counted before declaring Obama the next president of the United States.

It aims to demoralize McCain-Palin supporters. It's a psychological version of voter suppression.

The election has been decided. It's over. Get used to President Obama. "Happy Days are Here Again."

Wrong.

It's not over.