American Politics Journal -- Double-Talk's More Like It



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"Straight Talk"? Double-Talk's More Like It
McCain delicately fudges his religious affliation in order to placate the NRLC
Plus: Garry Wills Exposes Bradley's Voting Record

by Tamara Baker

Feb. 28, 2000 -- ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA (AmpolNS) -- I was apprised of the following by a friend of mine.

Seems he had been perusing the anti-abortion websites when he found a letter.

This letter had been sent to Roman Catholic bishops in the U.S. by Senator John McCain (R-AZ) on February 25, 1998. The letter was done in a futile attempt to placate the National Right to Life Committee people as part of his preparations for his Presidential campaign.

The letter is written in such a manner as to make it seem that Senator McCain is claiming to be a Catholic and a loyal son of Holy Mother Church. Here's the most telling portion:

"I hope your Excellency will agree that a pro-life Catholic can embrace the cause of campaign finance reform without undermining the admittedly more important cause which has properly been a primary concern of your Church."

No, it doesn't actually say he is a Catholic. But it's phrased in precisely the deceptive form that has been labeled (by the usual anti-Clinton suspects) "Clintonesque," a form designed to mislead people who read a bit too fast. McCain is a clever little weasel, especially with weasel words.

But is he really a Catholic? Not quite, as his profile in US News and World Reports shows.

"Spouse: Cindy Hensley McCain

"Children: Doug, Andy, Sydney, Meghan, Jack, Jimmy, Bridget

"Religion: Episcopalian"

Hmmmmm... last time I looked, "Episcopalian" and "Catholic" were two different forms of Christianity. For one thing, unlike Catholics, Episcopalians can not only have married priests, they can have female priests -- and even gay ones, depending on your particular brand of Episcopalianism.

Wonder what the Catholics of Michigan would have thought about this, had they known about it two weeks ago?

Bill Bradley just isn't making sense these days.

He knows he's doomed; his continued presence in the race is only going to hurt the Democratic cause in November, as he does the GOP's oppo work for them.

But does he quit? No. Instead, as David Corn pointed out last week, he wastes his time and our money -- our Federal matching funds -- on bashing Al Gore, a man who already has the endorsements of the biggest and best pro-choice groups around, for votes Gore made over twenty years ago.

Turnabout is fair play, Dollar Bill. If you intend to hold Al Gore accountable for votes made twenty years ago, and despite the staunchly pro-choice stance that he has had for the past decade, then by golly it's perfectly fair for us to dig up your stinky votes from the past

And guess what, Dollar Bill: we don't have to go back twenty years for most of them!

Garry Wills, one of the last of the logical thinkers still allowed to write newspaper columns in this Age of Dowd and Kelly, has put together a concise list of all of Bill Bradley's most wretched legislative mistakes, for which most of them Bradley, unlike Gore, flatly refuses to apologize.

...Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity notes that Bradley was the champion junketeer of his time, taking more than 160 all-expense-paid trips while in the Senate.
The normal explanation given by members of Congress who go on junkets is that the trips help inform them for legislative purposes. But that cannot be the motive for the 29 trips Bradley took in 1996, after declaring in the fall of 1995 his intent to resign in 1997. In his lame-duck year he went on 29 junkets, more than two a month. This did not prepare him for legislation (which he was not passing). It expanded contacts for his lucrative plunge into the private sector. As Lewis writes in The Buying of the President 2000: "A month after his retirement from the Senate, he was pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees from the same Wall Street brokerages whose practices he defended in the Senate."

But what about his 1986 tax reform bill? Surely this bill alone made his 18 years of public service meaningful, didn't it?

Not really:

...Lewis points out that it favored the wealthy. Bradley, for instance, removed the IRA tax break that was used by middle-class citizens for their retirement. This was offered as a revenue enhancer, though no more than $2,500 could be taken as a deduction under it. By contrast, Bradley kept the Keogh Plan, by which the wealthy could shield as much as 30 percent of their income from taxes.

But wait! There's more!

In 1989 Bradley gave an even greater break to the rich when he protected the unlimited deduction for corporate interest that fueled the takeover mania of the time. That allowed corporations to deduct as much as $611 billion in 1994 alone. Bradley said that the loss of revenue for the government would be made up by increases in capital gains by the takeovers, which could then be taxed, producing 'a wash' so far as the government treasury was concerned. But the capital gains tax produced only $150 billion revenue in 1994. Some wash.
While the corporate interest deduction was being debated in 1989, The Washington Post said that the takeover artists were flooding Congress with cash. Guess who got more of that cash than any other senator? It was, of course, Bill Bradley.

Bill Bradley's proposed health-care plan has been criticized for being too generous to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Could this have something to with how Bradley structured his plan? "...Bradley's dearest friends when he was in office were the pharmaceutical companies. He introduced 45 bills meant to reduce taxes on imported chemicals used by them. He won the Merck company a tariff suspension that was worth $1 million annually to them. The 'mother of all tax breaks' was the one Bradley defended in 1992, giving drug companies a 100 percent tax write-off for drugs they manufacture in Puerto Rico..."

Give it up, Dollar Bill. You're not fooling anyone anymore.