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The Real McCain: Book Review

By Kam Williams

"Race is one of the hot-button social issues of our time. As someone whose ancestors owned slaves and fought on the side of the Confederacy, McCain might have gone out of his way to stake out a clear and progressive position. Instead… he voted against making Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a federal holiday…

As recently as September 1999, McCain said that choosing whether to fly the Confederate flag 'should be left to the states,' and that 'personally, I see the flag as a symbol of heritage."

-- Excerpted from Chapter Eight (pages 118-119)

Ever since the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination turned ugly, all the attention has focused on the nasty, protracted battle between Obama and Clinton, with the candidates' every misstatement, association and peccadillo being dissected and examined under the media microscope. Meanwhile, the presumptive Republican nominee has been enjoying a free pass.

However, people shouldn't assume that, just because no one's critically assessing John McCain's resume', his voting record and checkered past don't deserve every bit as much scrutiny. Fortunately, political commentator Cliff Schecter agrees, and he's written a revealing expose' about the hot-headed senior senator from Arizona.

In the interest of equal time, his book, The Real McCain, deserves serious consideration by any citizen who believes in the Fairness Doctrine, because it reveals numerous rather disconcerting factoids about the war hero with designs on the White House. For instance, speaking of his stint in the Hanoi Hilton, are you aware that he cooperated with the enemy while being held in a POW camp? George Bush let that cat out of the bag when running against him back in 2000.

We learn that during that same campaign the Bush camp claimed that McCain had a black love child with a mistress. If true, the infidelity wasn't the big news, since he'd already taken full responsibility for the failure of his first marriage, admitting to cheating on his wife after she was seriously injured in an auto accident.

But he didn't say with whom. McCain having Jungle Fever would be noteworthy primarily because "his great-grandfather was a slaveholder who fought and died for the Confederacy," and he had followed in his forefather's steps by faithfully voting against African-American interests. So, just like segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond, a mulatto skeleton in the closet would mean McCain was another racist hypocrite masking his having the hots for black women.

Chock full of shocking indiscretions ranging from all of the above to allegations of bribe-taking, war profiteering, backstabbing, flip-flopping and even angry calling his wife a [C-word] in front of the press, The Real McCain is a book likely to take the bloom off the rose of a man whose past might otherwise remain unchallenged between the present and the general election.

Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him And Why independents Shouldn't
by Cliff Schechter
PoliPoint Press
Paperback
200 pages
ISBN: 0979482291