The Don’t Ask Don’t Tell hearings in the Senate have resumed. There’s no question that the policy needs to be repealed. What is outstanding: Why is John McCain such an asshole? Theories from The Daily Show and others.
The Senator has been on The Daily Show 13 times, more than anyone else as of 2008, but Jon Stewart has long since soured on him. And it’s no wonder, given that the Senator has lost any pretense of principle and is kicking and screaming in the face of progress. Nowhere is this clearer than in the debate over Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, where McCain first went back on his word that he would listen to the positions of military leaders, and then on his vow to listen to servicemembers surveyed in the Pentagon report.
Yesterday, McCain alternated between stonewalling by babbling on about Wikileaks and crankily trying to poke holes in the Pentagon report. This morning (which you can watch streaming here there’s little indication of that changing, even as the service chiefs are patiently schooling him. (Marine Corps commandant James Amos, who is both a holdout himself and represents the most reluctant constituency, is sort of an exception: he was the only one to use the word “homosexual,” a mild dog-whistle to bigots, and also to refer to the official name of the policy rather Don’t Ask Don’t tell, which makes it sound almost as bad as it is.)
The Atlantic’s James Fallows commented, “John McCain seems intentionally to be shrinking his audience, his base, and his standing in history. It’s unnecessary, and it is sad.” It would be even sadder if he got his way.
