John McCain is getting tangled up in the campaign finance rules he himself devised: FEC Warns McCain on Campaign Spending.
More hoisting, more petard
February 22nd, 2008 | Politics
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Gene Edward Veith is the Provost and Professor of Literature at Patrick Henry College, the Director of the Cranach Institute at Concordia Theological Seminary, a columnist for World Magazine and TableTalk, and the author of 18 books on different facets of Christianity & Culture.
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Lucas Cranach, self portrait c.1530.
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About Lucas Cranach
Lucas Cranach was the great artist of the Reformation. He was a close friend of Martin Luther. He was a businessman, who first printed Luther's translation of the Bible; a politician, who served on the Wittenberg town council and served the city as its mayor; a chemist, who operated a pharmacy; a teacher, who trained a host of apprentice artists; a family-man, who helped arrange Luther's marriage with the two men serving as the godfathers of each other's children; and an active layman in his church, who gave his pastors important personal and material support. As a Christian who lived out his faith in his many different callings, Cranach thus embodies the Reformation doctrine of vocation, using the gifts God had given him in service to Christ and his neighbor in the church, the family, the workplace, and the culture. In the spirit of Lucas Cranach, this blog will discuss wide-ranging issues of Christianity and culture with a Lutheran twist.
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6 comments ↓
McCain and the campaign finance laws are the subject of Ann Coulter’s latest column (www.anncoulter.com) where she states:
How did we end up with the mainstream media picking the Republican candidate for president?…
What a bizarre coincidence that a few years after the most draconian campaign-finance laws were imposed via McCain-Feingold, our two front-runners happen to be the media’s picks! It’s uncanny — almost as if by design! (Can I stop now, or do you people get sarcasm?)
By prohibiting speech by anyone else, the campaign-finance laws have vastly magnified the power of the media — which, by the way, are wholly exempt from speech restrictions under campaign-finance laws. The New York Times doesn’t have to buy ad time to promote a politician; it just has to call McCain a “maverick” 1 billion times a year.
She’s 100% correct.
So what?
Blame McCain all we want. Congress passed the stupid law, Bush signed it into law, and the Supreme Court upheld it.
Crazy, no?
Gives new meaning to ‘Yes we can.’
Because now, we can’t. Because we could.
Crazy.
organshoes - I agree it took many people to make this mess, but we can legitimately blame McCain. He made it his cause. He took an issue that nobody cared about and made it the focus of the nation. So much so that a president who vowed to veto it ended up signing despite saying he thought it was unconstitutional.
When the bill was first drafted it routinely polled around 20th on people’s list of most important things. Only the power of John McCain and his buddies in the media made it a national cause celebre.
So blame him, it is largely his fault.
But my problem with Bush on this issue was that he knew better — he knew it was unconstitutional but didn’t want to take the heat and signed it hoping the Supreme Court would reverse and save his bacon. Unfortunately, the Court didn’t have the guts to reverse. Given that Bush knew better and had the power to veto what he knew to be unconstititutional legislation, but didn’t because for some reason on this issue he was gutless, isn’t he actually as much to blame as McCain? I remember the profound disappointment I felt when Bush caved and signed this foul bill.
Don S - my post is not meant to absolve anyone connected with that horrible bill. But Bush would not have felt the pressure to do what he did had McCain not spent years trying to make it such an important issue.
The irony IS pretty exquisite, isn’t it? Well, I have 2 predictions. The first is that the McCain campaign will think of something. His campaign finance law is not only stupid and full of constitutional problems, it’s ineffective. He’ll figure out some way around it.
The second is that McCain (who I think hates to admit being wrong) will at least privately rethink this issue.
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