Senator John McCain Doesn't Hold Back; Good for Us, Less Good for Others

Senator John McCain, whose very impressive daughter Meghan appeared with the I-Man last week to talk about her book Dirty Sexy Politics, said today that he’d probably be President of the United States, if only he looked more like Senator John Thune. 

“A couple of other things could have gotten you elected,” Imus needled his friend.

McCain recently won the Republican primary in Arizona, where he is running for reelection to the Senate this year. Imus wondered whether, as he did while running for President, McCain would change all of his views on everything now that he had won the nomination.

(Note: Imus topped this question off by patting himself on the back and declaring, “That was a good one, Imus.”)

The situation south of the border in Mexico has changed drastically in the last few years, and McCain highlighted for Imus just how violent things have become: 28,000 people have been murdered in Mexico in the last three years; human smuggling and drug smuggling are rampant; as are home invasions and the destruction of wildlife refuges.

“I wonder on this issue—where are the human rights advocates?” said McCain, who then criticized President Obama’s seeming lack of concern with the border region. “He’s never been to the border. You’d think he’d have a passing interest.”

Although, as Imus pointed out, Arizona isn’t the only place in the U.S. that Obama has avoided visiting. “He went to the Gulf, encouraged everybody to come down there for vacation, and he goes to Martha’s Vineyard,” Imus said.

McCain is predicting “a big showdown” over the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, or as he calls it, “the Obama tax increases.”

“I don’t know why in the world you’d want to increase anybody’s taxes right now,” said McCain. “I guess he thinks everything is fine now after the ‘summer recovery’ we just went through.”

President? Or McCain punching bag?The key to avoiding raising taxes, he added, is simply to stop spending, something Obama seems incapable of doing. In spite of that, McCain believes Obama and the Democrats will, in the run-up to November’s midterm elections, make Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner “the villains.”

But he added, “That’s not going to change the facts on the ground.”

Famously hawkish on the war in Afghanistan, McCain again criticized Obama for declaring he’ll begin withdrawing troops from the country in the middle of next year.

“A Taliban captive told his interrogator, ‘You’ve got the watches, we’ve got the time,’” McCain said. “And you can’t win conflicts when you tell them you’re leaving.”

He chalked this mistake up to sheer naïveté. “This is a totally inexperienced President who is making decisions on national security for political reasons,” McCain said. “And I don’t make that charge lightly.”

Tell us how you really feel, Senator.

-Julie Kanfer