McCain's disrespect...

Today Arianna Huffington commented about last night's debate between McCain and Obama that McCain's best moment was when he said he saw "KGB" when he looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes. Just why is it a good moment for a presidential candidate when he essentially calls the leader of Russia a spy and a thug (which is the common image in the West of a KGB agent)? This was another example of something we've seen before during this campaign: McCain's tendency to be belligerent toward other leaders who deviate from some aspect of his worldview. It was also a brash, foolhardy thing to say about the leader of a country with whom the U.S. must work on a range of serious global problems. Are we to believe that Putin will forget this, or dismiss it as campaign rhetoric, if McCain were to be elected?

But John McCain has denounced one foreign leader after another all year: the Iranian leaders, Hugo Chavez, various other dictators -- and he cast an aspersion at the prime minister of Spain. Now the U.S. has great differences with most of the leaders that McCain doesn't like, and some of them may have said incendiary things. But America's leaders shouldn't parrot their style. Unless the president of the United States and those running for the office maintain some semblance of decorum in talking about the people with whom they are forced to deal once in office, the present reputation of the United States for bullying other nations will be compounded with the additional problem of American leaders becoming known for insulting other leaders. This is exactly what we do not need as a president: someone who personalizes our national interests and invests his likes and dislikes with gratuitous hostility.

It may also be clear now, on the evidence of the first debate, that McCain has a general tendency to denounce or ridicule those with whom he disagrees. His condescension and lecturing tone toward Senator Obama in the debate was a form of disrespect for a fellow member of the Senate and, by extension, for the millions of Americans whose votes for Senator Obama in the primaries won him the nomination of his party. If McCain can't practice simple courtesy on a program watched by 60 million Americas, why should we think he will be able to enlist the trust and goodwill of those whose cooperation he'll need to govern effectively?