John McCain puts country second
Chuck Hagel is now our new Secretary of Defense. Was there ever any doubt? Well, er, yeah.
From the time President Obama nominated Hagel, everybody knew there were enough votes to have him confirmed by the U.S. Senate. But Republicans, with what has apparently become their sole purpose for going to Washington, tried everything to block the inevitable.
First, during Hagel’s confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee, they peppered him with a relentless battery of questions — many of them having nothing to do with his suitability to head the Department of Defense. There were even implications about his taking money from that shadowy terrorist group — “Friends of Hamas.”
It was later discovered that “Friends of Hamas” hadn’t contributed a cent to Hagel, because “Friends of Hamas” doesn’t even exist. It had been mentioned as a joke by a reporter during a telephone call; then it was shoveled to right-wing blogs; and it later became the grist for questions among right-wing Senators, hoping to put the Hagel nomination on life-support. That failed. Hagel’s nomination was voted out of the Senate Armed Services Committee along straight party lines (14-11) on Feb. 12.
For Hagel and the president, the fun had just begun. So had the surge in Republican foot-dragging on a nomination that, if placed before the full Senate, would have been a fait accompli.
Soon after Hagel’s fate rested with the full Senate, perennial malcontent, Sen. John McCain, and his perennial co-malcontent, Sen. Lindsey Graham, went into action. Despite Hagel being a fellow Republican, and a fellow decorated Vietnam War veteran, McCain launched into a number of personal attacks against him.
“There’s a lot of ill-will towards Sen. Hagel, because when he was a Republican, he attacked President Bush mercilessly. At one point, he said he was the worst president since Herbert Hoover; said that the surge was the worst blunder since the Vietnam War, which was nonsense. And was very anti-his-own party and people. People don’t forget that,” said the guy who’d also not been endorsed by Hagel when he ran against Obama in 2008.
The words “when he was a Republican” tipped McCain’s hand, that he was really only out for revenge against Hagel. Hagel is still a Republican.
McCain’s comments indicated that since he was a candidate to join the Obama administration, he was sleeping with the enemy.
McCain, whose 2008 campaign slogan was “Country First,” really ran on a platform of “Country First, But If You Can Find a Reason To Get Vengeance For A Four-, Five- Or Six-Year Grudge, Then Country Comes in A Distant Second.”
McCain would later say he wouldn’t filibuster Hagel’s nomination. “I do not support a filibuster,” McCain told reporters. “I don’t think it’s appropriate, and I would oppose such a move.”
McCain filibustered Hagel’s nomination anyway.
The first attempt to end the filibuster against Hagel’s nomination failed by not getting the requisite 60 votes needed (58-40), with most Republicans, including McCain and Graham, voting against it.
With that vote, there were Republicans who claimed they needed more information about Hagel’s previously considered controversial statements and his ties to those non-existent, shadowy terrorist groups, before they’d vote to take the hold off of Hagel’s nomination.
After the Senate went on a two-week break, another vote was held to end the stranglehold on Hagel’s nomination.
Curiously, and without a single shred of new, damning information against Hagel, McCain and Graham joined forces with all of the Senate’s Democrats last Tuesday to end the filibuster – 71-27.
Instead of just McCain looking shallow, the handful of Republicans who switched their votes to end the filibuster joined him. It may have looked less like petty politics if they had just thrown water balloons at Hagel during those Armed Services Committee hearings.
Within hours of the vote to end the filibuster, Hagel was confirmed by the full Senate, nearly along straight party lines – 58-41. Hagel was sworn-in the following morning.
The Republicans lost another one. They failed to stop Hagel’s nomination, and they looked childish trying.
Uniontown native Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net