-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 24, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------McCain vs. Busn—A Marxist view
Frankenstein meets Wolfman
By Monica Moorehead
When Sen. John McCain of Arizona won the Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire, it sent a shock wave through the George W. Bush campaign. Support for McCain from a large block of independent conservatives proved to be decisive.
Bush received a wakeup call with this defeat, since he had assumed that his nomination was a done deal. After all, who can compete with my tens of millions of dollars, he had thought.
As the 2000 elections begin to dominate the media more and more, many workers will look for hopeful signs that one or another of the capitalist establishment candidates will raise the issues they care about. Others will be turned off completely by the electoral process.
Marxists and revolutionaries understand that the capitalist elections offer no opportunities for real fundamental social change or a higher standard of living, as far as the workers and the oppressed are concerned. There are no profound class differences between the Republican and Democratic parties. Both represent the interests first and foremost of the capitalist ruling class and its political and economic institutions.
But many people have succumbed to the erroneous view that the Republicans are the party of the rich and affluent, while the Democrats are the party of the workers and the poor. This theory does not hold water.
Consider the fact that both Bush and Democratic presidential hopeful Al Gore were born into ruling-class families. But even candidates who are not from the super-wealthy families that run the U.S. have learned how to serve the interests of that class.
Take McCain, for instance. McCain was born not into a ruling class family but an elite military family, with roots in the old Confederate slavocracy.
His great-great grandfather owned a Mississippi plantation with many slaves. He died in the Civil War, as an officer in the Mississippi cavalry, attempting to preserve slavery.
Both McCain's father and grandfather were Navy admirals, the equivalent of generals in other branches of the armed services. At the age of 17, McCain enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy, where he became an aircraft carrier pilot. In 1967, he volunteered to go to Vietnam. He was about to carry out his 23rd bombing mission over Vietnam when he was shot down and captured by the Vietnamese.
McCain was held captive for five years. During this period, his father, Adm. Jack McCain, was appointed supreme commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific.
A war criminal
McCain, in citing his credentials to be president, puts the main emphasis on being a "war hero and prisoner of war who endured the Hanoi Hilton." A more accurate description is that McCain was a war criminal who played a sordid role in killing and maiming untold numbers of innocent Vietnamese people, as well as helping to destroy the landscape and environment of that country. One can imagine how many tons of bombs and napalm he dropped in 22 missions.
That cruel war was not about honor or defending the U.S., or any of the noble phrases McCain has learned to say with a quiver in his voice and tears in his eyes. It was about expanding U.S. imperialism's domination in Asia. It was about the profits of the rubber, tin, oil, copper and other companies that take the riches out of so many countries in return for pennies in wages and royalties.
McCain is an entrenched reactionary promoting the military-industrial complex. He wants tens of billions of dollars to be taken away from health care and Social Security and spent on building a new system that supposedly--it hasn't worked very well--would defend this country against incoming missiles.
Along with the rest of the Senate, he recently voted down a ban on nuclear testing. He supports the unilateral U.S. military command of foreign operations. McCain also advocates covert operations to overthrow the governments of north Korea, Iraq and other countries that have been targets of U.S. aggression--something the CIA already does, of course.
The Rockefeller connection
His most prominent advisers on U.S. foreign policy are former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former chief U.S. delegate to the United Nations Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick. That's a tipoff to McCain's links to the multi-billionaires, because Kissinger has long been known as the voice of the Rockefellers. Under the Nixon administration, Kissinger's role became synonymous with the escalation of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.
McCain has proclaimed Ronald Reagan to be his hero.
On the domestic front, McCain is an opponent of abortion rights, opposes affirmative action except in "limited" cases, supports welfare-to-work rules that really mean slave wages, is for more cops on the streets to fight "crime" and so-called foreign drug trafficking, and voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has impoverished workers in Mexico, the U.S. and Canada while boosting profits for the rich.
During a campaign speech in Spartanburg, S.C., McCain launched a vicious attack on teachers' unions. He referred to their leaders as "self-serving union bosses." McCain used this occasion to support school vouchers and merit pay for teachers. School vouchers are an attack on the public school system; merit pay is an attempt to divide teachers.
Looking for the support of the Christian right, he also stated that if elected president, he would nominate judges who promote school prayer and post the Ten Commandments in schools. As one columnist put it, this means every kid will be advised daily not to "covet thy neighbor's wife."
McCain is a big supporter of local and states' rights and believes that no educational standards should be set for public schools by the federal government. If a predominantly white school district wants to resegregate the schools, in McCain's eyes, it has a "constitutional right" to do so.
Like many politicians, McCain speaks out of both sides of his mouth. When the controversy over the flying of the racist, Confederate flag in South Carolina was first introduced into the campaign, McCain claimed he was against the flag. He later defended the Confederate flag, saying it symbolized Southern "honor and heritage."
The big business press has characterized McCain as a moderate conservative. That's sidestepping who he really is. McCain is a racist, Bible-toting, anti-union, anti-poor candidate with deep ties to the military-industrial complex. But he is in the same ideological camp as George W. Bush, who is waging a vicious war against the poor and people of color by sanctioning state executions.
They may disagree on some issues, just as Gore and Bill Bradley may have varying opinions, but the bottom line is that none of these four candidates will stand up and fight back against the ruling class. Each candidate in his own way is trying to show he is willing to administer all aspects of the capitalist state. Who comes out on top depends on the ruling class deciding which candidate will be more adept in carrying out its program of more cutbacks in social services and more private investments.
Monica Moorehead is Workers World Party's 2000 presidential candidate.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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