McBush as T.R.? Bull!

(And I don't mean Moose.)

Yesterday in the New York Times, Adam Nagourney and Michael Cooper published more McBush fluffery positing the ridiculous noting that, somehow, John W. McBush’s presidential role model is Theodore Roosevelt here (I mean, that may be true, but McBush’s public life is a marked departure from the actions of our twenty-sixth president)…

“I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold,” Mr. McCain said, referring to Roosevelt’s reputation for reform, environmentalism and tough foreign policy.

There are so many directions I could go with this one, but I’ll stick to “reform” and “environmentalism.”

For starters (on the matter of “reform”), this post from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) tells us…

For McCain, there is no better example of how the image of reform has obscured the intersection of corporate donations and DC lobbyists than the Reform Institute. A nonprofit with an Orwellian name, the institute was founded by McCain and his allies a year after his failed 2000 (presidential) campaign. Billed as "a non-partisan election reform organization whose Honorary Chair is Senator John McCain," the institute wasn't really nonpartisan, and McCain was far more than an honorary chair. "It was predicated on McCain's political connections," says Robert Crane of the JEHT Foundation, a social justice organization in New York and one of the Reform Institute's past funders. "It wasn't an independent entity." To be sure, the institute did some good work at the state level in support of clean elections, but it always remained a John McCain protection agency.

The Reform Institute paid for McCain to give speeches and host town hall meetings, touted him in press releases and cultivated his donor list. The group was housed in the same offices as McCain's PAC, his re-election committee and Rick Davis's lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, which represented telecommunications and gambling interests along with foreign governments like Nigeria and Ukraine. The staff included McCain's campaign manager, Davis, as president; his chief fundraiser, Carla Eudy; and his Internet consultant, Rebecca Donatelli. It was incorporated by McCain counsel Trevor Potter, with seed money from former Merrill Lynch CEO Herb Allison, McCain's finance chairman in 2000. McCain was chairman of the board from 2001 until 2005. Meanwhile, Davis earned $395,000 for three years of work, Eudy took in $294,000 as a consultant and treasurer, and McCain policy guru John Raidt made $145,000 in 2006, to give one example of how the Reform Institute padded the coffers of McCain's political brain trust.

And concerning a cause he once championed…

As McCain's commitment to campaign-finance reform waned, so did that of the Reform Institute. Congressional scandals involving Tom DeLay and lobbyist Jack Abramoff presented the best opportunity since Watergate for disinfecting Washington. Yet after investigating Abramoff's links to Indian tribes, McCain, then chair of the Indian Affairs Committee, was nowhere to be found. "I remember being very frustrated trying to get him on board lobbying reform," says Craig Holman of Public Citizen. "He remained aloof until too late, then offered a very weak bill." The Reform Institute, at best, was also a bit player. "We haven't worked with them for over a year," Holman says. "They're very defensive about any criticism of McCain." Neither McCain nor the institute has supported legislation to modernize the presidential public-finance system (the Feingold-Collins bill) or to publicly finance Congressional campaigns (Durbin-Specter); Barack Obama co-sponsored both bills. When asked in 2006 whether he still supported public financing, as he did in 2002, McCain responded, "No."

And as far as cozy lobbyist connections, there is senior McBush strategist Charlie Black, who has worked for individuals such as Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire and Jonas Savimbi in Angola here; it is hard to imagine Roosevelt cutting deals with despots and dictators.

Also, I don’t know how this fits in exactly, but as I was checking into this, I came across this post that notes how McCain allegedly abused a family member of a Vietnam POW in 1996; the incident was never investigated (and is it really necessary to point out that T.R. never would have done such a thing?).

Meanwhile, this Wikipedia article on Roosevelt tells us the following (Roosevelt sought to regulate the “trusts” of his day, businesses composed of individuals more likely to reside on “K” Street now and comprised of people likely on McBush’s “speed dial” list)…

On leaving the Army, Roosevelt was elected governor of New York in 1898 as a Republican. He made such a concerted effort to root out corruption and "machine politics" that Republican boss Thomas Collier Platt forced him on (William) McKinley as a running mate in the 1900 election, against the wishes of McKinley's manager, Senator Mark Hanna.

…

His biggest success was passage of the Hepburn Act of 1906, the provisions of which were to be regulated by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). The most important provision of the Act gave the ICC the power to replace existing rates with "just-and-reasonable" maximum rates, with the ICC to define what was just and reasonable. Anti-rebate provisions were toughened, free passes were outlawed, and the penalties for violation were increased. Finally, the ICC gained the power to prescribe a uniform system of accounting, require standardized reports, and inspect railroad accounts. The Act made ICC orders binding; that is, the railroads had to either obey or contest the ICC orders in federal court. To speed the process, appeals from the district courts would go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In response to public clamor (and due to the uproar cause by Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle), Roosevelt pushed Congress to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, as well as the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. These laws provided for labeling of foods and drugs, inspection of livestock and mandated sanitary conditions at meatpacking plants. Congress replaced Roosevelt's proposals with a version supported by the major meatpackers who worried about the overseas markets, and did not want small unsanitary plants undercutting their domestic market.[43]

And concerning the environment…

Roosevelt was the first American president to consider the long-term needs for efficient conservation of national resources, winning the support of fellow hunters and fishermen to bolster his political base. He was the last trained observer to ever see a passenger pigeon, and on March 14, 1903, Roosevelt created the first National Bird Preserve, (the beginning of the Wildlife Refuge system) on Pelican Island, Florida. He recognized the imminent extinction of the American Bison and co-founded the American Bison Society (with William Temple Hornaday) in 1905. Roosevelt worked with the major figures of the conservation movement, especially his chief adviser on the matter, Gifford Pinchot. Roosevelt urged Congress to establish the United States Forest Service (1905), to manage government forest lands, and he appointed Gifford Pinchot to head the service. Roosevelt set aside more land for national parks and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined, 194 million acres (785,000 km²). In all, by 1909, the Roosevelt administration had created an unprecedented 42 million acres (170,000 km²) of national forests, 53 national wildlife refuges and 18 areas of "special interest", including the Grand Canyon. The Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the Badlands commemorates his conservationist philosophy.

In 1903, Roosevelt toured the Yosemite Valley with John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, but Roosevelt believed in the more efficient use of natural resources by corporations like lumber companies unlike Muir. In 1907, with Congress about to block him, Roosevelt hurried to designate 16 million acres (65,000 km²) of new national forests. In May 1908, he sponsored the Conference of Governors held in the White House, with a focus on the most efficient planning, analysis and use of water, forests and other natural resources. Roosevelt explained, "There is an intimate relation between our streams and the development and conservation of all the other great permanent sources of wealth." During his presidency, Roosevelt promoted the nascent conservation movement in essays for Outdoor Life magazine. To Roosevelt, conservation meant more and better usage and less waste, and a long-term perspective.[citation needed]

Roosevelt's conservationist leanings also impelled him to preserve national sites of scientific, particularly archaeological, interest. The 1906 passage of the Antiquities Act gave him a tool for creating national monuments by presidential proclamation, without requiring Congressional approval for each monument on an item-by-item basis. The language of the Antiquities Act specifically called for the preservation of "historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest," and was primarily construed by its creator, Congressman James F. Lacey (assisted by the prominent archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett), as targeting the prehistoric ruins of the American Southwest. Roosevelt, however, applied a typically broad interpretation to the Act, and the first national monument he proclaimed, Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, was preserved for reasons tied more to geology than archaeology.[citation needed]

And how's this for a commendable sense of environmentalism (would anyone dare to call T.R. a "tree hugger" today?).

Roosevelt's conservationism caused him to forbid having a Christmas tree in the White House. He was reportedly upset when he found a small tree his son had been hiding. After learning about the commercial farming of Christmas trees, where no virgin forests were cut down to supply the demand during the Christmas holiday, he relented and allowed his family to have a tree each season.[citation needed]

Meanwhile, as noted here…

U.S. Sen. John McCain, frontrunner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, received a zero score from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) for his congressional voting record on environmental issues in 2007.

It wasn’t that McCain voted against environmental protections in the 15 key votes that the LCV used to compile its annual congressional scorecard; he just didn’t bother to show up at all.

Of all the shamelessness of our corporate media stenography on behalf of McBush, the fact that his absolutely abysmal attendance record has been so thoroughly ignored may be the worst, though there’s a lot to choose from when it comes to his negligence in public life.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with this country’s political history knows why Theodore Roosevelt has been so revered and likely will be far into the future. And that is because, as a proud progressive (though imperfect like all of us), he advocated for and adopted policies to regulate business, ensured a respectable quality of life for U.S. citizens, and practiced care for and respect of our natural resources to the extent that it is no accident that he is one of the presidents enshrined on Mount Rushmore.

John W. McBush, however, devolved politically into a shameless mouthpiece on behalf of everything and everyone Roosevelt detested and battled throughout his government service. To ignore that is an insult to our history and the good common sense and intelligence of every American citizen.

Update 7/15/08: My God...