Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham — Prominent and Prolific Indicators of the Sheer Stupidity that Characterizes American National Politics

© 2012 Peter Free

 

28 November 2012

 

 

Virtually no one seems to “get” the rationale for Senators McCain and Graham’s attack on UN ambassador Susan Rice

 

That is my point about the prominence of blatant dumbness in American politics.

 

For days now, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have been going after our United Nations Ambassador, Susan Rice, for allegedly mischaracterizing the attack on the Benghazi consulate in Libya, which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and the three other Americans.

 

See, for example

 

Oren Dorell, GOP senators criticize Susan Rice after meeting, USA Today (27 November 2012)

 

In the Senators' opinion, not only did Rice mislead the American people, her mistake makes her a bad choice to become President Obama’s rumored next Secretary of State.

 

The Senators’ political ploy, however, makes no rational sense, even at a tantrum-prone 5 year old level.  It is as if two demented old men are scratching an itch that they are incapable of tracking to a soundly reasoned source.

 

Note

 

I leave first term Senator Kelly Ayotte (NH) out of the discussion.  She joined the McCain-Graham team in meeting with Ambassador Rice yesterday.

 

I ignore her, not because she is a newish Senator, nor because she is woman.  But because the media would have paid her no attention, absent the long-established Party preeminence of her two male colleagues.

 

For a nuanced discussion of what the apparently opportunistic Senator Ayotte might have been thinking, in allowing herself to be used as a token female to attack a more prominent woman, see:

 

Eric Randall, Sen. Kelly Ayotte: Third Amigo — Why the New Hampshire Senator is making friends with John McCain and Lindsey Graham, Boston Daily (28 November 2012)

 

 

No logic to the Senators’ political position regarding Ambassador Rice

 

Why would any sane person side-step taking an impregnable political position, in order to assume an obviously irrational and racially offensive one in its place?

 

Senators McCain and Graham, apparently following then presidential candidate Governor Mitt Romney’s lead, initially took a legitimate position in regard to Benghazi.  They and others pointed to the Obama Administration’s probable failure to adequately protect its diplomatic staff, even after local officials had asked for increased security.

 

That criticism made sense to me and many others.

 

Subsequently, when United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice was rumored to be a possible choice to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, the two Senators could legitimately have questioned whether she has the diplomatic temperament necessary to competently perform there.  Ambassador Rice is allegedly sometimes less than smoothly charming, when voicing piquant objections to other people’s doings or statements.

 

See, for example

 

Louis Charbonneau and Susan Cornwell, Susan Rice battles critics as abrasive style takes toll, Reuters via Chicago Tribune (23 November 2012)

 

But — instead of holding onto those two arguably sound political positions — the Senatorial pair aggressively made the issue revolve around what Ambassador Rice had said on television after the Benghazi attack.  Her gist at the time being that the attack had not been one of terror. With the Senators (again rightly) claiming that it had indeed been terror.

 

This, however, is where the Senators’ logic breaks down.  Their thrust is that Susan Rice either lied or was stupid.  Neither point is relevant to the main Benghazi issue.  And neither is probably true.

 

First, it is much more likely that Ambassador Rice was simply saying what the Administration had told her to.

 

If the Senators have a beef with what Rice said, they should take it up with the Commander in Chief or, alternatively, go through Secretary of State Clinton, whose bailiwick the attack occurred in.

 

Note

 

That the two Senators have not gone after Secretary Clinton does not surprise me.

 

She has to be one of the most admired (and extraordinarily hard-working) human beings in the world.  I doubt that either man has the courage (or frankly, the wit) to tangle with her intelligence or with her well-deserved fame.

 

Instead, our two prominent Senatorial quasi-clowns have implicitly tried to persuade the American public that our U.N. ambassador has somehow positioned herself in the direct chain of command for the Department of State’s diplomatic teams.  And, further, that Ambassador Rice has (or had) security responsibilities in regard to explaining what had happened in Benghazi.

 

I say this because it makes no chain of command sense to criticize Ambassador Rice for things she said after Benghazi, unless she had significant authority:

 

(a) over what had happened at the consulate

 

or

 

(b) over how what happened was presented to the public.

 

One cannot legitimately criticize a clearly subordinate figure for carrying out her boss’s orders or guidelines.

 

The Senators’ attempt to criticize Rice for allegedly altering what the CIA and/or FBI told her also makes no sense.  Even if she did go off on her own tangent, it is the President’s responsibility to correct her.  Her alleged mistakes fall at his door because he implicitly put her in a spokesperson position that the U.N. ambassador almost certainly should not have been in:

 

Would Ambassador Rice have substituted her judgment for the President’s and the CIA’s?  Not likely.  Crazy, she is not.

 

Nor has the Commander in Chief ever betrayed a willingness to let his U.N. representative (or anyone else) usurp his command authority.

 

Consequently, given the transparent logic of the actual situation, why are the two Senators targeting Susan Rice for their illogically taken criticisms?

 

 

Explaining the inexplicable

 

When examining why people do what they do, it helps to think about the combination of character and past performance.

 

Senator McCain has never struck me as either thoughtful or analytical.  Instead, for the most part, the man seems to be a walking bag of easily poked, impulsive peevishness.  For example, no one in Congress has been more eager to sacrifice other people’s lives in the prosecution of unnecessary and unwinnable wars.  And it is no secret that the Senator resents President Obama’s easy victory over him in the 2008 presidential election.

 

Senator Graham is a different story.  He is more thoughtful and arguably smarter.  But he is also an opportunist.  I suspect that he sees an opening for himself as Senator McCain’s foreign policy successor, once the Arizonan departs office.

 

Perhaps Senator Graham is infected with the Confederacy’s love of all things martial.  With a dollop of the secessionist states’ bigotry thrown in — now coming out in a surprisingly illogical attack on Ambassador Rice, who is a black woman capably serving a black president.

 

 

Looking under the bed that we never address — bigotry

 

George W. Bush’s African-American Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, is not a defense to charges of repressed bigotry in the Ambassador Rice matter.

 

The Republican Party is good at minority tokenism.  People of color (and people who think like people of color) recognize false representativeness, when they see it.

 

One give away is the fact that minority tokens almost always represent political positions that the overwhelming majority of their peers reject.  That, after all, is why the Republican Party tolerates and parades them.  Tokenism’s appeal lies in the camouflage that implies, “You look like me, so you must be like me.”

 

The 2012 election unequivocally demonstrated that most minority voters see through the Republican Party’s sparse parade of false diversity.

 

 

Peevishness, irritation, and resistance to change can manifest in unconscious ways

 

A black president, black attorney general, and black secretary of state would likely be too much for the philosophically reincarnated minions of the Confederacy to tolerate.  Hence, the treasonous babble about secession from so many Republican Party strongholds.

 

 

Another (chess-like) explanation — exploiting an opportunity to gain another Republican Senator

 

One hypothesis about the McCain-Graham show is that it hopes to persuade the President to nominate Democratic Senator John Kerry to be Secretary of State, rather than Susan Rice.

 

By getting Kerry out of the Senate, Republicans could nominate their just defeated Senator Scott Brown to run for Kerry’s subsequently vacant Massachusetts seat.  Given Brown’s continuing popularity, demonstrated by barely losing to Elizabeth Warren in November (in an overwhelmingly Democratic state), he might just win a special election.

 

 

But this hypothesized Senate strategy is dumb, too

 

The two Senators’ irrational attacks on Ambassador Rice are backing the President into a political corner.  He cannot very well substitute Senator Kerry for Ambassador Rice, without appearing to cave to the McCain-Graham bully team.

 

The President, master tactical politician that he is, is certainly aware of the Senate situation.

 

I rather doubt that McCain’s less gifted political intellect is going to triumph over the President’s superior one in this matter.

 

 

“So, what’s it all mean, Pete?”

 

For the moment, the Republican Party has left two of its preeminent, too frequently obtuse Senators in charge.

 

The pair is apparently doing its best to “piss” away a strong political position on Benghazi — in exchange for demonstrating (again) what a bunch of privileged geezer white guys the Party is comprised of.

 

Attacking a competent African-American female of admirable stature — after an election that spectacularly turned on the Democratic Party’s ability to turn out the minority vote — is about as dumb as even air-brained Republicans can get.

 

In marked contrast, Senator Joe Liebermann, a canny (but now retiring) politician, backed away from the McCain-Graham team on Sunday.  He took a position that the majority of sensible Americans would almost certainly agree with:

 

"I think, particularly in fairness to Ambassador Rice, there ought to be the widest public airing of what led to her statements and others in the administration particularly obviously if she's going to be nominated for secretary of state or some other high office," Lieberman said in an interview aired Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

 

"She's had a distinguished career up until now," Lieberman said.

 

"Secondly, I don't know, I don't feel that I know exactly what she was told before she went on TV that Sunday morning, and I think we ought to find out before we decide on whether she's a good or bad public servant."

 

© 2012 Juana Summers, Lieberman: Rice has had 'distinguished career up until now', Politico Now (25 November 2012) (paragraph split)

 

 

The moral? — We will probably be rid of such fools, only when they pass on in the course of time, embraced by the weeds of their dim-witted delusions

 

If American politics get any stupider, we will have to ritually kill ourselves to maintain our self-respect.