Sen. John McCain committed a classic Washington gaffe yesterday — he inadvertently told the truth about his party’s motives in filibustering the nomination of Republican former Sen. Chuck Hagel are petty and vindictive:
McCAIN: But to be honest with you, Neil, it goes back to there’s a lot of ill will towards Senator Hagel because when he was a Republican, he attacked President Bush mercilessly and say he was the worst President since Herbert Hoover and said the surge was the worst blunder since the Vietnam War, which was nonsense. He was anti-his own party and people — people don’t forget that. You can disagree but if you’re disagreeable, then people don’t forget that.
Hagel was wrong about Bush — he was the worst president, not since Hoover, but from James Buchanan or possibly Franklin Pierce, of whom Bush is a direct descendant through his mother, Barbara Pierce Bush. Even that is being polite. By every metric for measuring presidencies, Bush was the worst president ever. For example, he left office as the most unpopular president in the history of polling.
But seriously, as with their brinkmanship on the economy, rather than putting the interests of the United States first, Republicans are once again playing politics even at the risk of hobbling the leadership of the United States military and weakening national security. They have also made filibustering presidential nominees a standard practice from now on.
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