February 6, 2008, - 12:48 pm
John McCain Versus the Lawyers . . . Or Not
By Debbie Schlussel
If you’ve been watching a lot of TV coverage of the Presidential race, you’ve probably seen footage of John McCain telling a lawyer joke (the video is posted below, and the lawyer joke starts at about 1:10 into it). It’s been bothering a lot of lawyers (not me, though).
McCain is proud of the fact that of the major, viable candidates, he’s the only one without a law degree. As a lawyer who readily admits that my professional colleagues contribute to a lot of the problems in America, normally I’d say that’s an asset. We had a lawyer–actually a husband and wife lawyer team–running the country for eight years, and I don’t wish a return to those days.
The problem is that John McCain hasn’t exactly been against the lawyers in recent years. As you’ll recall, he was a strong supporter of ganging up on big tobacco. Who benefitted? The lawyers. And not just any lawyers, but the litigious lawyer fatcats who create an annual $10 billion plus tax on America. And he supported all kinds of other laws that help lawyers file more lawsuits . . . whether it’s campaign finance reform (a current lawsuit against people who made an anti-Hillary movie) or his opposition to Gitmo and torturing terrorists (that benefitted the ACLU and Islamist variety of lawyers).
So while John McCain–with whom I have many problems, but whom I’d much rather have than Cankles or Honorary NOI Minister Hussein Obama–may repeatedly use this tired, hackneyed joke to try to differentiate himself from both catfish and lawyers, his legislative career tells us otherwise: He’s in bed with the lawyers.
(President Bush also played the anti-lawyer game. But in office, he hired a bunch of incompetent lawyers to run important programs for which they were woefully inept–remember Michael Garcia and, now Julie Myers, at ICE? Michael Chertoff . . . Hello? You think McCain will be different? Or Romney?)
Let’s hope that this will change, once he’s in the White House. But don’t count on it. We basically have all lawyers–including honorary lawyer who doth protest too much, John McCain–running for Prez.
And that’s not a good thing. You remember what Shakespeare wrote about the first thing to do . . .
Tags: America, Bush, campaign finance reform, Debbie Schlussel, honorary lawyer, Honorary NOI Minister, Hussein Obama, John McCain, John McCain Versus, Julie Myers, law degree, lawyer, Michael Chertoff, Michael Garcia, President, USD, White House
McCain is DOA. In a race against a Democrat, the real Democrat will win over the fake one every time. You can bend over for Ted Kennedy all you want, but in the end, Ted is going with Obama.
Forget what the polls say now. McCain is not gonna beat anybody. He’ll get Bob Dole numbers.
The next four years will be a disaster of Jimmy Carter proportions. Watch your money and pray for what’s left of Israel.
[BP: SADLY, YOU ARE PROBABLY RIGHT. DS]
barrypopik on February 6, 2008 at 1:19 pm