Given Obama’s self-reported dug use and the fact that drug tests are a routine part of many workplaces, I think it is perfectly reasonable to ask him to take a drug test.

And I would expect anyone running for President to do that. A daily breath-alyzer for Cheney would have been a great idea from the get-go!

*facepalm*

It’s a pointless display orchestrated to give the appearance of candor while
providing no useful information.

Nobody forced McCain to release his medical records in the first place. If he didn’t want to, he should have shown some real courage, bucked public opinion, and taken the hit.

It’s disgraceful, and typical, for McCain to market himself as setting a new standard of transparency while engaging in a misdirection campaign. He did the same thing with the Senate Indian Affairs Committee investigation of the Abramoff scandal. He made a big show of revealing 3% of the documents he collected, while sitting on the other 97% in order to shield himself and his lobbyist buddies.

This time around, he was even more evasive. He only let reporters from two papers and two wire services look at some of his records for 4 hours without allowing them to make copies. We know nothing more about McCain’s health than we did before this dog and pony show.

Like I’ve said before, McCain has no obligation to tell us anything about his health. But if that’s how he feels about it, then he should be honest with the press and the public about that decision. He doesn’t have the guts to say “my health is private”–so he sets up a media circus to congratulate himself on his transparency. The press are stupid enough to think that he’s refreshingly candid. They eat it up.

McCain’s no maverick, he’s an old school Republican who surrounds himself with lobbyists and media consultants.

However, media access has changed a lot since 2000. During that campaign, most people did not have high-speed internet, blogging was far less prominent an outlet, and nobody had the bandwidth to provide large files to the public.

In 2000, if a reporter got 1000 pages of medical records, he would read them and write a story about whatever was salient in them.

Today, if 1000 pages of medical records were given to the press, they would be PDFed in their entirety on a million websites and available forever. No political candidate has ever been subjected to such public scrutiny, and voters have never considered themselves entitled to such expansive access.

As for McCain’s temper, I think a lot of those people are exactly what he called them. McCain decided to wage a personal crusade around reforming legislative policies that are detrimental, but which aren’t well-understood by the public. He sees people getting screwed over in favor of interests and their lobbyists. The voters don’t know and don’t really care, legislators in both parties benefit enormously from the status quo.

McCain’s reform efforts earned him enmity from the Republican Congressional leadership, and disadvantaged him politically. I would guess that one of the few perks that comes with advocating policies that are disfavored by those in charge is that you don’t have to kiss ass, defer to rank, or be nice to people you think are fucking jerks.

I don’t think there are many here who would disagree with McCain’s assessments of various Republicans, and it’s kind of interesting that he seems to heap most of his enmity on his own party.

Lyndon Johnson, I believe, used a Goldwater was crazy and would go nuclear argument. Ironically for this post of yours, Goldwater may have been the President that would have let gays into the Armed Forces without restriction.

And I would expect anyone running for President to do that. A daily breath-alyzer for Cheney would have been a great idea from the get-go!

I think people who call for mental health evaluations of others are more of the problem than the solution.

It’s the candidate’s choice how much of his private information he wants to share.

It’s the voter’s right to reject a candidate who can’t or won’t clear up well-founded doubts about his fitness for office.

Health is a legitimate consideration when choosing a candidate for the most powerful office in the world.

There are two key questions here:

1) Is McCain healthy now? He claims he’s cancer free, but he won’t even give his hand-picked reporters enough access to his medical records to form an intelligent opinion.

2) Given his medical history, how likely is McCain to remain healthy through his presidency.

Some people are uncomfortable about taking (2) into account. They say it’s speculative. I think it’s a fair question to ask, but I can accept their position.

(1) is non-negotiable. McCain thinks it’s worth showing his medical records to the press. That’s his choice. Clearly his campaign advisers accept that questions about his health are legitimate. But if he’s going to go the disclosure route, we deserve real disclosure, not the fake “eyes-only” media event he’s given us so far.

If you’re not healthy enough to lead, nothing else matters. Do you want a president juggling chemo and statecraft?

McCain had a very public bout with a medical condition that kills a third of the people who get it within 10 years of diagnosis. McCain has had at least four melanomas, plus a more recent basal cell cancer.

Unlike you, I am happy to admit my racism. But it won’t prevent me from voting for Obama if he wins the nomination, and it doesn’t prevent me from trying to help people see that they are championing forms of discrimination that are sure to have a particularly adverse effect on certain racial groups.

“Go Duck yourself,” as McCain would say.