McCain Misses Point Of Democracy

If you hired an employee who only showed up for work 50% of the time, would you fire him? Any budget conscious employer would object to paying a full wage in return for a 50% effort. If you are an Arizona resident, you are paying the salary of someone employed to represent your interests, but who only shows up to represent you 50% of the time. You would not tolerate that from your personal attorney, or from your physician, but for some reason 50% is all you require from someone who influences your border security, your highway funding, your national defense, how much you pay in taxes, and other trivial matters. The Washington Post’s Capitol Briefing Blog tracks presidential candidates who masquerade as senators or congressmen if it does not cut into their visits to key early primary states. Which candidate leads the pack in dereliction of the duties voters hired him to perform for them? The culprit is Arizona Senator John McCain, who has now missed 42 straight votes in the Senate. To put that in context, voters have paid McCain’s monthly salary from mid-April to mid-May, and with the salary for that month McCain did not vote once in the Senate. Post reporter Paul Kane cleverly edited McCain’s political byline, which normally reads (R-AZ) to (R-Campaign Trail), and for good reason.

Of course, the demands of campaigning are very real and often underestimated by those who have never witnessed the daily operations of a campaign staff, security, and the candidates themselves. I do not begrudge McCain the need to be out on the road getting his message out, which if you’re an illegal alien celebrating the proposed Senate immigration bill appears to be “we’re glad you’re here and don’t care that you broke our laws, and we’re giving you a leg up on legal immigrants who continue to wait patiently and obeyed our laws.” But I digress. Additionally, other candidates who unfortunately (for their constituents) are also hampered by the pesky demands of holding public office are missing votes, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, although both have missed far fewer votes than McCain (1.8% and 6.4%). Others seem to find time to campaign and continue doing the job for which they were elected, but not McCain. What caught my attention in the report of McCain’s missed votes were the criteria used by McCain and his staff to determine that missing 42 straight votes would not matter.

The following is a paragraph from Kane’s report that also contains a brief statement from the McCain campaign:

Granted, McCain isn't the only senator missing votes in favor of the presidential campaign trail. And as his staff has pointed out repeatedly, none of McCain's missed votes has made the difference in a bill's fate. In a statement to Capitol Briefing, McCain's campaign said, "Regrettably, it is impossible for a presidential candidate to avoid missing votes. The Senator has not missed a vote where his vote would have affected the outcome, and he will make every effort to be in the Senate on the occasions when it would."

The next time you hear a politician urge citizens to be actively involved in politics and to exercise their right to vote, or when you hear the bleak reports after each election in which barely 40% of Americans care enough to vote even when the handling of a war is at stake, the statement from McCain’s campaign should come to mind. When citizens in a democracy adopt the attitude that they should only vote when they are sure their vote will influence the outcome, democracy no longer functions. Yet McCain has adopted just such an attitude, and instead of voting so that his support or opposition is officially recorded he just skips the opportunity to cast his vote. The hypocrisy of McCain’s actions is clearly illustrated in his urging young Americans to become more active in politics and to vote.

The following is an excerpt from an article John McCain wrote for Washington Monthly in October 2001 titled “Putting the ‘National’ In National Service”:

Beyond such concrete needs lies a deeper spiritual crisis within our national culture. Since Watergate, we have witnessed an increased cynicism about our governmental institutions. We see its impact in declining voter participation and apathy about our public life---symptoms of a system that demands reform. But it's a mistake, I think, to believe that this apathy means Americans do not love their country and aren't motivated to fix what is wrong. The growth of local volunteerism and the outpouring of sentiment for "the greatest generation" suggest a different explanation: that Americans hunger for patriotic service to the nation, but do not see ways to personally make a difference.

What is lacking today is not a need for patriotic service, nor a willingness to serve, but the opportunity. Indeed, one of the curious truths of our era is that while opportunities to serve ourselves have exploded---with ever-expanding choices of what to buy, where to eat, what to read, watch, or listen to---opportunities to spend some time serving our country have narrowed.

Perhaps the decline in voter participation and the growing apathy about public life is a direct result of declining voter participation in the Senate. Why would McCain expect young Americans in particular to seek out opportunities to serve their country when he does not make good use of his ample opportunities to vote on important legislation? He decried selfishly serving ourselves, yet he avoids voting in the Senate while serving his own personal desire to be president. The excuse that a bill’s fate does not hang in the balance is inconsistent with conservative principles. If the constitution is to be taken seriously, then Senators should lead by example, conducting the people’s business and voting regardless of any predicted outcome.

Consider the case of Florida in the 2000 presidential election. One of the most intense controversies occurred when CNN, CBS, and other liberal-leaning networks declared that Al Gore was the projected winner in Florida long before the polls had closed in the western panhandle of the state, which is strongly Republican. Many voters in the panhandle, upon hearing that Gore was projected to win the state regardless of votes that had not yet been cast, made the unfortunate decision not to drive to the polls and wait in long lines. Like McCain’s Senate voting attitude, the outcome did not appear to be in the balance. The reality, realized later of course, was that every vote did count and had Florida panhandle voters not adopted the McCain criteria for voter participation, a large number of Republican votes would have made the entire vote count fiasco in West Palm Beach County completely unnecessary.

Senator McCain is a war hero and a patriot, but he appears to have missed the point of democracy, a point that we have been trying to teach in the fragile Iraqi democracy: we do not vote only if our vote will clearly make the difference, we vote because we can. Once we no longer appreciate that privilege, we have surrendered our right to freedom.

Other posts referencing John McCain:
McCain’s League Proposal is “Super”
Brit Crew Claims Opposing Captors “Not An Option”: Heroic POWs In History Considered It The Only Option
McCain: “I’m Sure I Have A Policy On That, I Just Need To Check What It Is”
Forgetting The Unforgettable: Pills May Soon Erase Traumatic Memories