The New York Times is troubled, troubled by a disturbing lack of transparency, which has become a pattern, for some of our country's presidential aspirants. One candidate they aren't troubled by is Barack Obama, who has led the way in transparency and ethics, and the Times praised him accordingly. But let's look at the bad apples, starting with the apples that actually matter still:
John McCain
John McCain is old. Too old? Who knows. But he is old, and he has had a history of health problems, most notably an aggressive form of skin cancer in 2000. Now hopefully it is fine, but voters have no idea. He could be dying and no one would know, because he continually refuses to release his medical records to the public. He managed to become the Republican Party's presidential nominee, without letting the voters know about the health of a man who is 71, who will turn 72 a couple months before election day, and who could conceivably be 80 upon leaving office. I'm not picking on the guy here, and neither is the New York Times, the American people have a right to know whether or not their potential president is going to pull a William Henry Harrison on them. As the Times stated the other day in an editorial, "No presidential candidate should get to the point that he has locked up his party’s nomination without public vetting of his health. And Mr. McCain, in particular, knows that. ... Voters are entitled to know about other potential health concerns for an average 71-year-old man." Yet McCain has continued to stall, which would not make much sense unless he had something to hide. John McCain has also not released nearly as many financial records as Obama has released, which the Times criticized as well.
Cindy McCain
Cindy McCain is dirty filthy rich, as the daughter of a major beer distributor, and now the corporation's chair. Cindy used her fortune to finance McCain's first congressional election back in the 80s, thus he essentially owes his political career to her and her corporate money. Yet Cindy McCain won't release her financial information. Even today on the Today Show she said unequivocally that she will never disclose her financial records, even if she becomes First Lady. The Times disagrees, saying it is vital that she disclose her financial records "to gain public trust and to air potential conflicts of interest". Apparently Cindy McCain is hoping Americans don't care about McCain's relationship to corporate money, his conflicts of interest, and his campaign joyriding on corporate jets owned by Cindy's company.
It should also be noted that in the same interview she repeatedly promised that McCain will not run a negative campaign with negative attacks, and said that they would rather lose than resort to that -- this coming after McCain's attempts to say that terrorists support Obama because a spokesman of Hamas commented that he wanted Obama to win (or conversely just didn't want another neoconservative to win), because apparently wanting America to change it's neoimperialistic warmongering, as the whole world wants, is a crazy pro-terrorist thing. McCain obviously hasn't noticed that the majority of people in almost every country want Obama to win the presidency, people want change. So so much for no negative campaigning...and I guarantee there will be a lot more where that came from, so I'll probably be referring back to this interview with Cindy McCain from time to time.
The Clintons
After much delay the Clintons finally released some of their financial records a few weeks ago, showing us that in the last few years they have made over $100 million. Left out were tax returns from 2007, as well as a full accounting of where Bill's money came from, leading to further questions of potential conflicts of interest. As the Times notes:
The public is still owed a more complete accounting of the sources and amounts of Mr. Clinton’s speaking fees and business income. Still missing, too, is a complete list of the major donors who have been supporting the Clinton presidential library and foundation.Also Hillary still refuses to release most of her records from her time as First Lady, a period that includes all of her claims to superior experience. Of course the matter is pretty much moot at this point, because she has lost, but it is just further evidence of the Clintons' proclivity for secrecy and their resistance to transparency in government, a resistance we've lived with for the last 8 years in the White House, and a resistance shared by the McCains.
The editorial ends by saying, "The extent of a candidate’s candor is a good measure of how candid he or she will be in the White House."
Exactly, yet another area where Obama sets a high bar, and the Clintons and McCain fail to pass a low bar.
Update: Here is Obama's very presidential response to McCain's "Hamas" pathetic smear attempts:
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