7-12-08, 9:19 am

The McCain campaign has a new commercial contrasting the fabled hippie 'Summer of Love' in 1967 and its message of 'uncertainty, hope and change,' with what it calls 'another kind of love – love of country,” John McCain shot down, bayoneted and tortured. As the commercial goes on, McCain comes home, tells it like it is, makes speeches, stands in front of American flags, and shakes hands with Nancy Reagan. As the beer-commercial nationalists say, “McCain is the man, the real man,” the real candidate of change and hope, the actor not the talker — unlike that wet-behind-the-ears Barack Obama. There is a kind of obscenity in the way the commercial connects the upsurge of hope generated by the social movements of the 1960s — none of which McCain supported time ¬— with the patriotic 'love' represented by the bombing of Vietnam. While the peace movement opposed the war, the bombing, and the escalation, McCain now criticizes US policy as wrong because the escalation did not go far enough. The former bomber pilot, shot down on a raid over Hanoi, would like to have seen even more bombing and more escalation to bring Vietnam to its knees. Today we need to recall that it was the escalation of the Vietnam War that created the political divisions that brought an end to Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and the Great Society social programs here at home. These days, however, even though his handlers try to make him out as a war-movie-style hero, John McCain isn’t talking like John Wayne in “The Green Berets” — he’s sounding more Maxwell Smart, the screwball secret agent of the television series “Get Smart,” saying ridiculous things and calling for ridiculous policies in the midst of crises that aren't funny. For example, McCain is promising a 'balanced budget' by the end of his first term while continuing to staunchly support Bush’s deficit-building tax cuts, and keeping his mouth firmly shut about the increases in military spending his policies would dictate. This is like promising a national health policy to fight the flu based on a program of steroid injections — you’ll build up people strong enough to resist it. Then there’s McCain's 'health program,' which is based on very expensive federal support programs for people who cannot get coverage because the illnesses they have put them in 'high risk pools.' Actually, New Jersey, where I live, and many other states, have similar insurance programs for drivers with bad records — programs that compensate the insurers (who reap the profits) and provide subsidies for the drivers, who still pay significantly higher premiums. There are significant problems with such auto insurance polices — they provide, in effect, insurance for the insurers, but the suggestion that McCain’s is a serious program when applied to the nation’s health, with tens of millions currently without any insurance and larger numbers who are seriously under-insured, is truly worthy of Maxwell Smart. Meanwhile, McCain had another Maxwell Smart moment the other day in his response to Iran's missile tests. After saying that this showed the need for 'missile defense in Europe as is planned with the Czech Republic and Poland' (Maxwell Smart would see immediately the threat that Tehran poses to Warsaw and Prague), McCain went on to say that 'Iran now poses the greatest strategic challenge to the United States in a generation.' What is a generation? There is no hard and fast answer but I was taught in university that it was about 25 years. This means that Iran represents a greater strategic challenge to the US than Iraq (which McCain's favorite president, Ronald Reagan, backed in its war with Iran 25 ago), or bin Laden and Al Qaeda, two creations of the Reagan-CIA war in Afghanistan, along with the Taliban government. The US fought two Gulf Wars against forces that were not as threatening as the Iranians today. But McCain really got going when he tried to beat up on Barack Obama for offering to engage in talks with the Iranian leadership, having his 'senior policy foreign policy advisor' call that 'cowboy summitry' (Goldwater-Reagan-Bush Republicans calling other people cowboys goes beyond “Get Smart”). McCain, who accuses Obama of being all talk, then denounced him for not supporting a strongly-worded Senate resolution condemning Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a 'terrorist organization (Obama supported a similar but less belligerent resolution). All of this is a non-issue. Reversing the situation, it’s a little bit like one Iranian politician denouncing another for failing to support a strongly-worded resolution condemning the CIA as a 'terrorist organization.'

At least Maxwell Smart was funny. McCain, who wants to subsidize medical insurers by counting employer contributions to health plans as taxable employee income (a good way to raise taxes on the general population), also said today that he was 'open' to federal bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two major mortgage insurers who are now picking up the expensive pieces from the deregulation disaster that threatens millions of homeowners. A while ago, McCain was talking tough against 'predatory lenders.' Now he is talking about saving homeowners by saving the lenders. But McCain is a man of action, not words. What kind of action? You could watch The “Green Berets” or even Ronald Regan in the Korean War brainwashing and torture film “Prisoner of War.” I prefer to watch “Get Smart,” or, if I am really shook up, “Dr. Strangelove.”