I made a separate post for this, even though it is from the same Politico interview as the previous post. Reason: It deserves it's own post. Check this out and tell me what caught my eye here:
Asked if he could deal with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whom he has consistently excoriated on the stump, McCain flashed a smile and said: “I’ve faced bad guys in my time.”
“I’d be glad to meet with him,” McCain added. “It would be important to have some kind of framework for the meeting. In other words, there would have to be some kind of predetermined, at least outcome about some aspects of the meeting … for example, some progress in some area that was agreed upon earlier – the Nixon in China, Reagan-Gorbachev, et cetera. It would have to be something besides just a, quote, meeting.”
If you put the bad guy title of the post together with the bad guy part of that then I have some hope.
Since when is it okay for a candidate to call the head of government of a, if not friendly, at least not hostile government a "bad guy?" A former head of state of that government, no less.
This is a guy with foreign policy experience? Tell me, Senator McCain, would you meet with a guy running for Russian president who described you as a "bad guy" if you are elected and he wins? I don't think so. I think that would seriously sour your attitude towards that person.
Ronald Reagan did not call Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov "evil." Rather, he called the country or system an "evil empire."
In your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil. - President Ronald Reagan, March 8, 1983
You see, John, it isn't about personal politics. It about international diplomacy. George H.W. Bush started this crap with his personal vilification of Saddam Hussein. Perhaps that was the correct course, as it was he, personally, who was responsible for nearly everything that went on in Iraq. He didn't close the deal on that monster, as was probably also correct. I and many of my ilk still think there were other, better, ways to deal with him. George W. Bush and his cronies, have taken personal relations in international politics to an extreme. You seem poised to continue down that dangerous path.
Everything in this administration is about personal relationships. Just because you personally think Vladimir Putin is an a$%&#le, which he is, does not mean it is alright to shout it from the mountaintops if you are aspiring to lead the world's last superpower. Don't buy into this personalization of international relations.
Do personal relationships come into play somewhat, sure. However, our relationship is between the government and people of the United States of America and the government and people of the Russian Federation. You would do well to remember that.
Your comments do absolutely nothing to help that relationship. All that comment does is serve to vent steam, waste a chip, and create another hurdle to someday normalizing our relationship with one of the world's largest countries and economies.
It is only about the person when you are talking about monsters. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Amin, Hussein. These were monsters. It stopped being about the relations between the countries and rather between the monster and various other countries and leaders. Putin is a jerk, but he has not shown that he is a monster.
It is our relations with the country he represents, not him, that matter. You have made a increasingly difficult situation to recover from that much harder, if you become president. That is not a real smart move.
Do you really think Nixon liked Nikita Khrushchev? Or Chou En-Lai? How about Reagan and Saddam Hussein? Or Deng Xiaoping? Did the personal relationship interfere with the relations between countries in those relationships? Sure Reagan and Gorbachev got along. But even that success has been exaggerated. They were united in a common desire not to blow each other and their countries up. They weren't really best buddies.
Regardless, I have never heard of a major presidential candidate say anything akin to "I’ve faced bad guys in my time" when asked about the head of government or head of state of a power that we are not at war or nearly at war with. I am sure Russia isn't happy with that statement. I am not sure why no one else seems to be calling him on it.
Perhaps you shouldn't listen to that former lobbyist for the Georgian government who is now your foreign policy adviser so much;-)
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern Sphere: Related Content
