Mark Salter And 'The One'

by hilzoy

Watching McCain's new video, 'The One', I remembered a recent New Republic piece on Mark Salter:

"Salter is still McCain's chief wordsmith as well as a top campaign operative and, for all practical purposes, McCain's brain. (...) "Salter's just spent so much time with McCain that I don't know if McCain's figured out Salter or Salter's figured out McCain," says former McCain media adviser Mark McKinnon. Another person friendly with both men calls it a "mind meld." But Salter not only channels McCain better than anyone. He has also demonstrated a one-of-a-kind instinct for how to craft McCain's public image. Over the years, he has taken the raw material of McCain's biography and temperament and turned it into a compelling narrative that supersedes politics--one about an independent-minded war hero who celebrates courage and humility, demands individual sacrifice, and excoriates vanity."

This is the particular passage that the video brought to mind:

"But nothing seems to rile up Salter like Obama himself. In a February speech drafted by Salter, McCain cracked that he did not harbor the "presumption that I am blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save my country in its hour of need"--clearly a taunt aimed at Obama. Salter recently told The Boston Globe that Obama's campaign is based around a "messianic complex." "Yeah, I think politics have changed," Salter said to me, referring to Obama's campaign. "The politics are: 'Elect me!'"

Like Jean Rohe, Obama also provoked Salter into some intemperate typing--even before the campaign began. After Obama and McCain differed over ethics reform, in early 2006, Salter wrote a long and overheated letter under McCain's name ripping Obama for "self interested partisan posturing," leading to unhelpful press chatter about McCain's temper. (Salter says Weaver often jokes about removing the "send" button from his keyboard.)

All the more galling for Salter is his belief that Obama the candidate is lifting from McCain's oeuvre. Obama has recently described his transformation from a selfish young man who thought "life was all about me" to an adult who realizes "that life doesn't count for much unless you're willing to do your small part to leave our children--all of our children--a better world. Even if it's difficult. Even if the work seems great. Even if we don't get very far in our lifetime." Salter hears in this an echo of McCain's longtime account of outgrowing his troublemaking and self-centered youth to find a higher purpose in serving others. ("I often regret that we didn't copyright 'serving a cause greater than your self-interest,'" he cracks.)"

Think about the last paragraph I quoted ...

... and ask yourself: what kind of person would think that Obama describing his transformation from a selfish young man to an adult who sees the need for a larger purpose counts as "stealing from McCain's oeuvre", rather than describing a common phenomenon? Or that he could "copyright 'serving a cause greater than your self-interest'", as though either the phrase or the idea were his own invention? What's next: trying to copyright 'and' or 'the'? Saying that John McCain has a patent on the idea of growing up?

And that 2006 letter the TNR piece mentions: it's one of those letters that makes you think: 'This is why God in His infinite wisdom gave us the delete key'; the kind that people sometimes write in their heads when they're angry, but should never, ever, ever actually send. It began: "Dear Senator Obama: I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere", and went on from there. I had always assumed McCain wrote it himself: I thought that a letter like that would never have been sent out had it been written by anyone other than McCain, and it had a tone of personal pique that made it hard to imagine that someone else had written it.

And yet someone else had.

***

It's always a very dangerous thing when one of your closest aides shares and reinforces your worst defects. If the TNR piece is accurate, then Salter shares and reinforces many of McCain's. He feels a kind of ownership of McCain's image (not surprising, since he helped to craft it.) When he thinks it's being slighted, he can respond as intemperately as McCain himself. He is touchy and petulant. He has a massive sense of entitlement on McCain's behalf, and feels aggrieved when he thinks that McCain is not getting his due.

Most importantly of all, having created the mythical John McCain, he seems to have bought into it completely. From the TNR piece:

"Salter is the main architect, via the many books and speeches, of what you might call the McCain code. McCain, says Salter, "is not an introspective or contemplative guy. But he has instincts, or a code of behavior, that I guess is a kind of philosophy." It's been Salter's job to articulate and package this code. The 53-year-old Salter is, as Schnur puts it, "the custodian of John McCain's identity.""

The code seems to be largely Salter's creation:

"A few months after he returned home from Vietnam in 1973, John McCain wrote a 12,000-word account of his five-and-a-half years captivity in a Vietnamese prison for U.S. News & World Report. The detailed narrative is crude, offering precious little insight or writerly grace: "The Oriental, as you may know, likes to beat around the bush quite a bit"; "A lot of [the guards] were homosexual, although never toward us"; "you never can fathom the 'gooks.'" McCain's conclusions tend to be banal. "Now I see more of an appreciation of our way of life. There is more patriotism. The flag is all over the place."

Twenty-six years later, in 1999, McCain published the autobiographical book Faith of My Fathers. Once again, McCain sought to articulate the lessons of his Vietnam experience. But, this time, the results were radically different. Captivity, he wrote,

helped me achieve a balance in my life, a balance between my own individualism and more important things. ... I discovered I was dependent on others to a greater extent than I had ever realized, but that neither they nor the cause we served made any claims on my identity. On the contrary, they gave me a larger sense of myself than I had had before."

One of the major differences between those two accounts: the first was written by John McCain, and the second by Mark Salter.

And what is McCain's code? From yesterday's Washington Post profile of McCain:

"There is an elaborate record of the principles and beliefs that govern McCain's thinking about politics and policy in the five books he and Salter have written, scores of speeches they have collaborated on over nearly two decades, and countless interviews, including one last week for this article. That record reveals a complicated man whose approach to the world cannot be summed up in an aphorism or two. He is a striver and a combatant, often at war with himself, who has conducted a lifelong struggle "to prove to myself that I was the man I had always wanted to be," as he has written. (...)

McCain is a figure from an old-fashioned America that is out of fashion in our most cosmopolitan precincts -- the America of "Gunsmoke" and Gary Cooper, not "The Daily Show" and George Clooney. For McCain, "Duty, Honor, Country" isn't patriotic pablum but a credo to live by. And he has worked out a way to apply the credo to politics. He summarized it in a commencement address at Johns Hopkins in 1999, when he gave the graduates this advice:

"Enter public life determined to tell the truth; to put problem-solving ahead of partisanship; to defend the public interest against the special interests; to risk your personal ambitions for the sake of the country and the ideals that make her great. Keep your promise to America, and you will keep your honor. You will know a happiness far more sublime than pleasure."

"That's what it's all about," McCain said in the interview."

It doesn't take more than a moment's reflection to see that this is not a code that McCain is actually living by at present. ""Duty, Honor, Country" isn't patriotic pablum but a credo to live by": that's hard to square with McCain's willingness to accuse Obama of being willing to lose a war in order to win an election. Likewise, his call to "enter public life determined to tell the truth" is obviously inconsistent with the farrago of lies his campaign has treated us to lately.

But both McCain and Salter seem to be too heavily invested in the myth of John McCain, selfless man of character, to see this. It's not the first time either has been blinded in this way: McCain famously failed to see what was wrong with his conduct during the Keating Five scandal until after he was caught, and it was only after the 2000 Presidential campaign that Salter wrote, in McCain's name: "I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. ... In truth, I'd had the ambition for a long time."

And now, once again, McCain and Salter continue to believe their own hype. Salter has created a mythical man of character in which he seems to be deeply invested, and has projected it onto McCain; McCain seems to have accepted this version of himself as reality. Both find it galling when this myth is questioned, and particularly galling when an upstart like Obama seems to steal their thunder. TNR:

"And [Obama], too, according to Salter's view of him, violates the McCain code in nearly every way: He is vain but not experienced; his campaign is focused on an individual, not the greater good; he has not demonstrated real courage in life or politics. Meanwhile, a supercilious culture is tearing down Salter's idol. McCain, once revered as a hero, is now regularly mocked as a doddering buffoon on liberal blogs and "The Daily Show" by people--unlike John McCain and Pete Salter--who often have made no sacrifice of their own for America."

Whoever you support in this election, that's a remarkably dismissive view of Obama. In Salter and McCain's place, I would not underestimate him in this way.

***

Either Salter or the side of McCain that has merged with him seems to me likely to be behind 'The One'. There's the same focus on Obama's imaginary messianic streak, the over-the-top quality also found in the 2006 letter the article refers to, the resentment, but most of all, the same sense of deep grievance clearly visible behind the attempts at humor that are meant to conceal it.

If I'm at all right about the personal dynamics that are in play here, we can expect more of this: more over-the-top indignation at imaginary slights, more petulance, more outrage at the very idea that a mere celebrity like Barack Obama might eclipse a man who is consistently willing to put his country ahead of his own ambitions.

Since, in this case, reality does have a liberal bias, what with John McCain not actually being the man of character that he and Salter imagine him to be, there should be many occasions for them to feed their shared sense of grievance over the months to come, and many more painful eruptions of wounded vanity like 'The One'.

Comments

[MeDrewNotYou]

Before bed, here's some fresh snark.

Saying that John McCain has a patent on the idea of growing up?

I view this as an excuse to never have to grow up, since I can't afford to pay royalties. So if anyone wants to have a snowball fight or open a lemonade stand, give me a call. I'll be free anytime, since you don't have to get a job until you're a grown up.

John McCain just won my vote. ^.^

[KCinDC]

Was that Washington Post profile written by Salter too?

[Davis X. Machina]

"Duty, honor, country", my ass.

"Just win, baby!" is more like it.

I expect a McCain administration to attempt to add Al Davis to Mt. Rushmore, and replace 'e pluribus unum' on the coinage with 'winning isn't everything, it's the only thing'.

[Whammer]

The lack of insight and banality in the "first draft" of McCain's experiences in Vietnam should come as no surprise.

You don't graduate 894th out of 899 by accident.

[Warren Terra]

It always vexes me that McCain is frequently described in news reports as having written 5 books (and in the primaries that Sen. Clinton was described as having written 2) when in fact they've each written as many books as did Socks the cat. I'm sure they were more involved than Socks was, but based on those two quoted passages maybe McCain wasn't a lot more involved. The worst offender was All Things Considered's report on what Obama's, Clinton's, and McCain's autobiographies told us about them, when only Obama wrote an autobiography, but I've seen at least two or three references to McCain having written five books just in the last week. And yes, on a more topical note, McCain's evident belief that he always not only occupies but defines the moral high ground is distressing. The concept that any aide could write such an unhinged letter and sign it with their boss's name just boggles my mind, especially as it didn't result in any open reprimand. Heck, anyone occupying an official staff position and releasing that letter under their own name would be risking their position with any rational employer.

[OCSteve]

Very interesting Hilzoy. I’ve said here more than once that I don’t believe McCain has the right temperament to be president.

I guess I’ll change that to Mark Salter doesn’t have the right temperament to have the president’s ear.

[john miller]

"McCain, says Salter, "is not an introspective or contemplative guy. But he has instincts, or a code of behavior, that I guess is a kind of philosophy." "

Well, Salter himself tells us why McCain is unfit to be President. After having a President for 8 years who is neither introspective or contemplative and who states openly he operates from an instinctal level, why should we elect another?

[Svensker]

McCain, once revered as a hero, is now regularly mocked as a doddering buffoon on liberal blogs and "The Daily Show" by people--unlike John McCain and Pete Salter--who often have made no sacrifice of their own for America."

(I think he meant Mark not Pete.)

How has Salter sacrificed? Is he an unsung hero of Khe Sanh?

The whole thing is just so childish and navel-gazing. Ugh.

[Shinobi]

Didn't you know John, thinking things through is for elitists. Real Americans fly by the seat of their pants. (in other words...think with their butts.)

I think my favorite part of that "The one" ad is where they use footage from a speech where I think Obama is making fun of the messianic rhetoric.

[Davis X. Machina]

After having a President for 8 years who is neither introspective or contemplative and who states openly he operates from an instinctual level, why should we elect another?

Reflection, introspection, the weighing of alternatives. Not manly. Not edgy. No frisson there.

Give us The Triumph of the Gut, Part II.

Half the voters in this country aren't electing a president, they're not even choosing a commander-in-chief -- they're hiring a contract killer.

[Ugh]

I'd vote for Socks over McCain right now.

Half the voters in this country aren't electing a president, they're not even choosing a commander-in-chief -- they're hiring a contract killer.

And someone who will give the middle finger to the rest of the world on a regular basis.

[felix culpa]

Outstandingly great post, hilzoy.

[hilzoy]

Thanks, felix. And greetings from Dubai. I realized only just now that I have never been here while it was still light before. 44 centigrade. Wow.

Really, though, I just checked in to offer this tidbit, which is McCain's response to Obama's acceptance of the debate format:

"John McCain looks forward to debating Barack Obama as often as possible, but it's disappointing that Senator Obama has refused his offer to do joint town hall meetings. We understand it might be beneath a worldwide celebrity of Barack Obama's magnitude to appear at town hall meetings alongside John McCain and directly answer questions from the American people, but we hope he'll reconsider."

They truly, truly need to learn how not to hit the send key.

[Michael Cain]

"...helped me achieve a balance in my life, a balance between my own individualism and more important things. ... I discovered I was dependent on others to a greater extent than I had ever realized..."

Perhaps it's just me, but it seems odd that the same man who wrote this in 1999 is running today on a domestic platform which places so much emphasis on the individual rather than the group: individual retirement, individual health care financing, etc.

[Gary Farber]

"I realized only just now that I have never been here while it was still light before. 44 centigrade. Wow."

That's not unusual in Phoenix in summer.

[Catsy]

We understand it might be beneath a worldwide celebrity of Barack Obama's magnitude to appear at town hall meetings alongside John McCain and directly answer questions from the American people, but we hope he'll reconsider.

Are they fscking kidding me? I mean seriously, I laughed out loud. Obama was right: is this the best they've got?

This is the sort of catty, pissy, peevish, too-clever-by-half crap you write in a thread dedicated to flamewars, or when you're posturing in a forum or comments section and using flaming as performance art. This imbecile is running his boss's campaign as if he thinks he's on the Public channel arguing over whether Han or Greedo shot first and whether they use Macs or PCs to run the Matrix.

[Davis X. Machina]

Obama was right: is this the best they've got?

And McCain is right -- it's probably good enough.

We live in a very sick polity.

[Catsy]

And McCain is right -- it's probably good enough.

I don't think so. Not this time. I think the breadth and depth of the revulsion the Republican brand is creating across the country is being significantly under-reported, mainly because so many of the media gatekeepers are either demonstrably in the tank for McCain or have a vested interest in keeping the race close. I think the vile campaign McCain's running is certainly enough to have some effect, but it's not enough to stop the wave. They simply don't, and can't, see it coming.

[Gary Farber]

They just ran the ad on ABC's This Week, as free media for discussion, btw.

[Davis X. Machina]

I don't think so. Not this time.

I'm a firm believer in the three-pope theory.

Catholics maintain, with some justification, that major changes in the Church have to go through three popes.

Pope 1: Never -- you'll never see X! It is, and always will be, contrary to the immutable teaching of Mother Church.

Pope 2: Never -- you'll never see X while I'm alive!

Pope 3: X is, and always has been, the immutable teaching of Mother Church.

I think, with reference to GOP-media incest turning on the parties in the menage, that we're at Pope 2.

[john miller]

Re what Gary just mentioned. I watch limited TV of any sort, other than USA network on Friday nights, so would like imput from others. How many of McCain's ludicrous ads have been given free publicity on major media forums versus how many of Obama's, which are not ludicrous?

[Smargash]

McCain's petulance and wingeness is the voice of a little privileged white boy who had been raised to expect certain things as his natural right, who had been told that, to receive what he deserves, all he had to do was be upstanding, to act according to The Code, and just be John McCain. Now, decades later, the little boy feels betrayed BY HIS ELDERS, HIS VERY COUNTRY, and he reacts with blind, unthinking fury.

I'd guess that something similar is beneath the resentful, furious tone in the conservative legal discourse that Publius drew our attention to in a recent post.

[monkey.dave]

McCain is a figure from an old-fashioned America that is out of fashion in our most cosmopolitan precincts -- the America of "Gunsmoke" and Gary Cooper, not "The Daily Show" and George Clooney.

Yes, you'd never catch John McCain appearing on The Daily Show on eight separate occasions.

[cleek]

Yes, you'd never catch John McCain appearing on The Daily Show on eight separate occasions.

13, actually.

[david]

"and ask yourself: what kind of person would think that Obama describing his transformation from a selfish young man to an adult who sees the need for a larger purpose counts as "stealing from McCain's oeuvre""

Thank God they never passed the "Augustine intellectual property act" of 420 BCE, or McCain wouldn't have a campaign at all.

[bago]

Obama knows kung fu.

[Black Saint J]

McCain does not know anything about the Economy, where Iraq, Iran, Pakistan or Afghanistan are in relation to each other, the different between the Shiites and Sunnis or anything else.

What is Amazing is how anyone can be an Senator for so many years and know so little, about so much!

McCain is too Stupid to be an Senator, too Stupid to be President and too Treasonous to be an American! My Friends.

McCain's Hispanic Outreach person Juan Hernandez was a Cabinet member in Mexico's Vicente Fox's government and VP of the racist hate organization La Raza (The Race) & is openly for Reconquest of the American Southwest!.

Some of his comments.

“We have recognized that the Mexican population is 100 million in Mexico and 23 million who live in the United States…We are a united nation.”

Mexican immigrants “are going to keep one foot in Mexico and are not going to assimilate.”

Mexico's total economic policy is to send their Criminals and Uneducated peons to the US for Tax payers to support as they cost tax payers Billions sucking at the trough of public Welfare & for their free Medical & Schooling, while Killing, Robbing and Raping Americans citizens by the 10,s of thousands, for Businesses to Exploit and Profits from, and Corrupt Politicians to Pander and Cuddle for votes, while ignoring our Constitution against Invasion, the Rule of Law & their Oath of Office!

Apparently McCain agrees with his adviser about the Reconquest of the Southwest and the Colonization of American, or he would support our Constitution against Invasion, the Rule of Law, and Honor his Oath of Office, instead of rewarding the Invading horde & he would get another adviser!

McCain is an ex-hero and now American traitor like Benedict Arnold and should be attested, tried for treason, gave a fast but fair trial then an public execution on National TV!

Barrack the Great One------------------------------

As everyone but politicians, Liberals & the Media knows, Action talks, Bull Sh-t walks!

Barrack sit at the feet of his friend and Mentor for 20 years, supported him with his money, his family, subjected his children to his hate filled rants and listened to hate whites, Jews, American, hate everyone with the exception of Blacks and Muslims!

Barrack & his wife are American hating, Black Power Racist proven by 20 years of attending & supporting the Church of Hate and backed up by Barracks words in Dreams of my Father!

All the pundits, talking heads, Liberal drivel and warm tingling feeling below their waist, cannot change the facts.

Now, he says it was repugnant to him and he does not endorse it or agree! It is 20 years too late for anyone with an brain to accept. Either Barrack is lying or he has an serious mental problem! No one in their right mind would sit in the church of hate for 20 years and support it every way possible, unless they agreed with the message or they were crazy!

What if an White Republican politician had sit at the feet of his Friend and Mentor in an Baptist Church for 20 years and listened to him preach, rant and spew out racist hate bile against everyone and everything except Whites and Baptists.

Oh, The Outrage, the Moral Condemnation, The Media, Blacks leaders & all the Black Rev's crawling out of every cracker jack box, the Liberals and Democrats would be squealing like pigs caught under the gate!

Republican politicians chiming in loudly to prove how politically correct they are.

Every one of the known and unknown in the universe would be calling for his head, no punishment would be enough, resigning from office would not be enough, the poor follow would have to change his name, travel incognito, flee the country! The IRS and FBI would be investigating the church, the church closed and all its members disbanded and scattered to the four winds!

What does Barrack, the Magnificent (May Peace be upon Him) have to do? Why just make an nice little speech blaming it all on his little old white grandmother, just throw her under the bus of his racist prejudice and if that is not enough, just whites in general!

But Wait, that speech was for the Rev. Wright and his hate rants, Not why Barrack the Chosen one, the scion of the Muslim goat herder, the deserted son of the typical black father, the One We have waiting for to lead American and the world to the promise land. Barrack the Great one sit in the church for 20 years and listened to his Friend and Mentor spew out hate Rants. That He, the Supreme one, found repugnant and disgusting but with just one little speech and never answer why the Magnificent One and his Wife (may Peace be upon them) have so much hate and all is right and forgiven in Barrack land!

If nothing else this campaign has Exposed the racism of Blacks and the total Blinding, Unbelievable Hypocrisy, the like of any Balance or Morals that the Liberals, Democrats, and Media have! They have been exposed as Lying, Deceitful, Bigoted Hypocrites, Unable or Unwilling to face or to tell the truth!

[cleek]

BS J, you should probably clean up the grammar and spelling mistakes in those comments before you copy/paste them again.

[rea]

Maybe I'm showing my age, but I thought Nixon was "the one."

http://eyeball-series.org/prezsec/pict400.jpg

[cleek]

Maybe I'm showing my age, but I thought Nixon was "the one."

God, in his infinite wisdom
Put Richard Nixon on this earth
To bring to us his heritage
One of priceless worth

A courageous leader
And a blessed man
Surely in God’s plan

His heritage is from Heaven
And the magic from above
The rapture of music and melody
Of culture and of love

Yes, God, in his infinite wisdom
Put Richard Nixon on this earth
To bring to us his heritage
One of priceless worth

A leader with endless courage
A miracle you might say
And all who have met Nixon love him so
The genius of his way

God, in his infinite wisdom
Put Richard Nixon on this earth
To bring to us his heritage
One of priceless worth

--

can be found on The Makers Of Smooth Music

[rea]

Thank God they never passed the "Augustine intellectual property act" of 420 BCE

CE rather than BCE, surely.

[Jesurgislac]

Depends how good their prophet-margin was.

[MeDrewNotYou]

Jes- That pun made me physically ill. ^.^

[witless chum]

""John McCain looks forward to debating Barack Obama as often as possible, but it's disappointing that Senator Obama has refused his offer to do joint town hall meetings. We understand it might be beneath a worldwide celebrity of Barack Obama's magnitude to appear at town hall meetings alongside John McCain and directly answer questions from the American people, but we hope he'll reconsider.""

Y'know who I bet an answer like this would really piss off? John McCain.

[Jeff]

BS J, you should probably clean up the grammar and spelling mistakes in those comments before you copy/paste them again.

Not to mention actually reading / listening to / learning about any of the malarky he posted.