Sleight of hand, slighted honor

By Carter Bundy

The McCain/Palin convention (you can’t call it a Republican convention, since the party’s name wasn’t used) is one of the great misdirects of all time. With impressive chutzpah, the Republican Party has decided to try to convince the American people that they should fight against the last eight years of Republican control by… electing Republicans.

Even stranger, they want Americans to elect Republicans with policies virtually identical to the current president, excepting maybe a little more objection to torture (and, before Palin, support for stem-cell research).

It’s quite the sleight of hand, having the most powerful establishment people in America sitting in a convention center clamoring for change from — get this — themselves. I think it was Sprint who ran the TV ad where the CEO says he’s going with Sprint to “stick it to the man,” and then the assistant says “but sir, you are the man.” Apparently irony isn’t only for commercials anymore.

Slighted honor

One thing many of us admired about John McCain in 2000 was his insistence on taking the high road against what was, at the time, the slimiest primary campaign waged in modern American politics.

George W. Bush’s smears against Cindy and John McCain’s adopted daughter were false and disgusting. The were disgusting not because there’s anything at all wrong with interracial marriage or relations, but because they played on the racism of South Carolina Republicans and also said McCain had fathered a child out of wedlock.

Not that having a child out of wedlock makes anyone bad either, and it turns out that McCain’s infidelity is true in other instances, but it used a false accusation of infidelity with an African American to play on South Carolina Republicans’ warped views.

How badly does he want it?

The punch line to the entire 2000 GOP primary, of course, is that Bush’s and Rove’s cynical, dishonest, corrupt tactics worked against McCain. But McCain so wants to be president that the lesson he learned was that he, too, had to become a dishonorable person.

We all respect Sen. McCain’s service, but the recent series of attacks on Sen. Obama are false, knowingly false, deceptive and disgusting. Plenty of others have detailed the lies in McCain’s tax attacks. The newest attacks on Sen. Obama, though, are far worse. They imply that he’s in favor of very young children learning how to have sex.

Baloney. He voted for a bill in the Illinois legislature that allowed local school boards to institute age-appropriate sex ed in the K-12 schools. First, K-12 is the generic term used in almost every state, including New Mexico, to describe the public schools prior to college. Second, the clear purpose, stated at the time by supporters of the bill, for having education for younger kids was to prevent and identify sexual abuse.

Obama’s with all of America in wanting to stop sexual predators and abuse. That’s all that part of the bill was about. The GOP attack implies that anyone voting for the bill favors kindergartners engaging in sexual activity. This is a new low for McCain, but straight out of the national GOP’s playbook. What honor McCain had after 2000 has long since been discarded.

Fool me three times

Rove and W did a nice job of tricking America into thinking that near-boy scout Al Gore was a habitual liar. They sicced their lying swiftboat attack dogs to go after John Kerry’s sterling in-country service record during Vietnam, in direct contrast to draft-dodging, AWOL-going Bush.

Now, McCain and Rove’s protégé Steve Schmidt have decided to take on one of Barack Obama’s great strengths: that he’s a family man, proud and protective father of two little girls, in direct contrast to cheating John McCain.

Fabricating deceitful stories that attack the strength of the Dem candidate has been the core strategery for three consecutive GOP presidential campaigns. There’s a saying in Texas, and I’m pretty sure it’s in Tennessee, too: Fool me once… can’t get fooled again. Wonder if W knows the saying for being fooled three straight times?

Insurance fraud

Sometimes the sleight of hand and slighted honor goes beyond politics to actual policy. That’s what I saw this week when, on the same day, I watched two polar opposite portrayals of our national health-care debate.

Unlike the McCain of 2008, there are many in the health-insurance industry with honor. I doubt many of them are happy that there are large numbers of uninsured or that their companies deny claims that make America a sicker place than it should be.

But being a decent person alone isn’t enough. America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) is pushing its own version of health-care reform. This from the most entrenched part of an industry that has dragged its feet on even the most basic of reforms like electronic medical records for decades.

The insurance industry swears it wants to cover everyone. Fine. Then explain how the same day we heard from them, I drew the ire of a state employee for — get this — having Achilles tendon surgery.

We were both limping along coming out of an event, and she said something about her bum Achilles. I said that it was a funny coincidence, because I’d had surgery on my Achilles a few months before. Her first words? “I hate you.”

Strange response. I asked why. She’d been injured on the job and workers’ comp hadn’t covered Achilles tendon surgery. Then her health insurance rejected her claim saying that workplace injuries, even if not covered by workers’ comp, weren’t covered under her policy either.

It’s awful. This otherwise able-bodied person will now have a severe limp the rest of her life because not only was workers’ comp skimpy, but the health-insurance company wouldn’t provide the most basic of services to keep her walking.

The insurance companies are right that we need dramatic health-care reform in America, but it’s about as likely to come from them as national change is to come from McCain and Palin.

Each is quite the sleight of hand, but worse, a slight of honor.

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.