Know the Candidates: John McCain

Know the candidates is something that will become a regular feature here in election years.  These posts will cover the religious beliefs and background, and how those beliefs have influenced their political lives over the years.

I’m starting this feature with John McCain mainly because he has broken ahead of the pack as the front runner for the Republicans while the Democrats are still mired in a neck and neck race that might not be resolved until they get to the convention in Denver later this year.

So where does McCain stand on religious issues?  Can we look forward to a more secular society under a McCain presidency, or will it be more of the same religiously informed bad decision making that we’ve had to endure under the Bush presidency?  He went through his 2000 campaign and the start of the current campaign with a more centrist political stance, but in recent months he’s been courting the religious right in an effort to get a piece of that voting block that put George W. in the White House for two terms, and as a result he’s said some alarming things concerning religion and politics.

Take this gem from an interview Senator McCain gave to BeliefNet:

I think the number one issue people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United States is, ‘Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?’”

So already in the first paragraph we have a bit of a misunderstanding about the founding principles of this country.  I would argue that the country was founded by men who had Enlightenment principles and a healthy fear of religious tyranny in mind, but we can sidestep that debate by looking at the founding documents themselves.  That’s the great thing about the founding fathers, they left one hell of a paper trail.  But McCain would rather ignore that paper trail and the facts in favor of his own beliefs: 

I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.

You really have to wonder if John McCain is reading the same Constitution that the founding fathers actually drafted back in 1791, because it sure as hell doesn’t sound like he is.

 

The Declaration of Independence mentions that we’re endowed by our creator with inalienable rights, but that’s about the only nod in support of religion that you see in the Declaration or the Constitution.  The Constitution itself is mostly silent about religion, except in the Bill of Rights where the separation of church and state is explicitly laid out and in Article VI, Section 3 where it explicitly states that religion is not a requirement for public office.  I wanted to highlight that point since it seems to have been forgotten in recent election cycles. 

 

So rather than founding the nation on Christian principles, the Constitution actually sets out clear rules to keep Christianity out of the government.  I’d really like to see the logic McCain uses to justify his religious Constitution theory.

 

But McCain goes on:

I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles…. personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith. But that doesn’t mean that I’m sure that someone who is Muslim would not make a good president. I don’t say that we would rule out under any circumstances someone of a different faith. I just would–I just feel that that’s an important part of our qualifications to lead.

Remember that pesky Article VI, Section 3 that I mentioned in the last paragraph? 

We were founded as a nation on Judeo-Christian principles. There’s very little debate about that.

What are Christian principles, when you get down to it?  What’s the essence of Christianity?  Our nation was founded on the principle that mankind is suffering from a curse stemming from giving into temptation and eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and that the only way to redeem that curse is to accept that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the one true path to salvation?  Really?

 

I’ve read through the Declaration, Constitution, and Federalist Papers, and I don’t remember reading a single thing about Jesus saving our nation from its sins.

 

Isn’t it more likely that our country was  founded on a mixture of ideas that were borrowed from British government and common law of the time with a healthy dose of Enlightenment principles thrown into the mix to give our government that vibrant New World flavor that separates our nation from all of those stodgy old revolution-prone European governments?

 

 

So McCain is wrong, wrong, wrong on that score.

 

But at least we can take comfort in the fact that John McCain does believe in the separation of church and state regardless of what his personal religious convictions are, right?

Our Founding Fathers believed in separation of church and state and they stated it unequivocally… when some people interpret their desire for separation of church and state as a failure to acknowledge the importance and influence of our Creator, I think that they have a different view of history than I do.

Right.  Separation of church and state is A-OK as far as John McCain is concerned, as long as you believe in God.   I suppose you could say that we do have a different view of history, insofar as we believe in history and you believe in a fairy tale where Washington, Madison, Franklin, and company did a merry dance around Independence Hall with their Bibles shouting about how great God was.

 

To top it off, McCain is against a federal ban on gay marriage, saying it should be left to the states, but was one of the most vocal supporters of a proposed ban in Arizona.  So he’s trying to sidestep the issue by throwing it to the states when in fact he’s all for denying a basic civil right to the GLBT community.  And he supports the teaching of Intelligent Design in the schools. 

 

Finally, and perhaps scariest of all, the runner-up on the Republican side is none other than Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister who believes in young-earth creationism and who has advocated a constitutional amendment to bring U.S. law more in line with Christian doctrines.  It’s not a certainty, but there is a good chance that a McCain presidential ticket will have Huckabee in the number two role, especially since Huckabee has proven that he can bring in those evangelical christian votes that McCain has had lust in his heart for these past few months. 

 

Did I mention that McCain will be 72 years old at his inauguration if elected, and that the average lifespan for males in the United States is currently hovering around 73.5?  The motto in the primaries over the past few weeks was “a vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain” as Huckabee deflected conservative voters from Romney, but come November a vote for McCain could very well become a vote for Huckabee.  And do we really want that nutjob in the White House in any capacity?

 

So if you are at all in support of separation of church and state.  If you’re sick of the evangelical motivated bullshit that we’ve had to put up with under Bush for the past eight years.  Don’t vote for McCain.  If you think that America is in great shape thanks to Bush and his direct line to the Almighty then you can rejoice, it turns out McCain isn’t nearly as bad as the evangelicals initially thought.

 

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