Debbie Schlussel: John McCain Versus the Lawyers . . . Or Not
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 . . .
Posted by Debbie on February 6, 2008 12:48 PM to Debbie Schlussel