John McCain Officially Most Absent Member of the Senate
| Thu Apr. 24, 2008 8:08 AM PDT
We've written before about the fact that John McCain has more or less abdicated all of his responsibilities in the Senate while running for president. The man almost never votes anymore: he once went five consecutive weeks without voting. Now we learn that he's the Senate's top absentee, passing Democratic Senator Tim Johnson of North Dakota, who suffered a brain hemorrhage in December 2006 and was unable to return to the Senate until last fall, in terms of votes missed. I guess it takes time to suggest doing nothing about America's economic crisis.
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Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has missed 181 of 2479 votes since 23 Jan 2001 for a 93% "present and voting" record.
John McCain (R-AZ) has missed 632 of 3793 votes since 22 Jan 1997 for an 83% "present and voting" record.
Barack Obama (D-IL) has missed 208 of 1171 votes since 6 Jan 2005 for an 82% "present and voting" record.
Here in Florida we had problems with unfair attacks based on the voting record of the last Dem to run for Governor. The guy actually had something like a 93% voting record up to the point where he ran for Governor, then it dropped off for obvious reason (running a campaign, duh), and of course Christ (now Gov.) ran a bunch of stupid ads attacking him. I didn't think it was a fair argument then and unless you show some hard evidence proving just how much worse he is than the average member of congress who's a candidate, then I don't think that this is a fair argument either. Unless you give us a more detailed comparison to others in the same position you should stick with other stuff like the hundred years in Iraq plan, or the he used to have the guts to ask rich people for taxes in war time but doesn't any more thing. There is a lot going against him lately (he seemed almost decent for a Republican when the campaign started and now he's positively Bushy) and either harder evidence should be given or a better argument should be found.
Hey, but it's okay because McCain is a "Maverick." He just can't be bothered with showing up and voting. We all know where he stands, right?
Besides, he has to spend time schmoozing the MSM to keep them from realizing he's not CLOSE to having the conservative base buttoned down.
In 2001, McCain founded the Alexandria, Va.-based Reform Institute as a vehicle to receive funding from George Soros' Open Society Institute and Teresa Heinz Kerry's Tides Foundation and several other prominent non-profit organizations.
Arianna Huffington, syndicated columnist and creator of the HuffingtonPost.com, has served on the Reform Institute's advisory committee since the group's inception.
When will the people see the truth about McCain? He has never worked in his life. He has been a playboy, maverick, daredevil, and trouble has followed him everywhere his been. The "Forestal" is an example. The "Keating 5". If anyone says that his a hero i will buy ocean front property in Arizona. Give me a break.
Luz,
I understand you frustration. But for most the country, being locked up in the "Hanoi Hilton" for five and a half years passes the smell test. Any attempt to "Swiftboat" McCain's status as a hero will fail miserably.
What IS "fair game" is his grasp of the complexity of foreign policy and his appreciation of the REAL limits of the nation's military capabilities. Knowing what we know about his personality, is he likely to react to the next big security crisis as Bush 41 did (build broad consensus, even if it takes a few months longer than our short-attention-span news cycles) or embrace the "go it alone" doctrine of pre-emptive action as Dubya did?
Going "Rambo" is easy. Going "Eisenhower" (his biggest task in the Normandy invasion was keeping some of the world's-greatest-ever egos in check for 15 months) takes tact, patience and humility. McCain has seldom displayed any of those qualities.
And then there's that sticky problem about applying proper and prudent fiscal and monetary tools to our troubled economic picture. But that's another topic....
Looking at Arthur Ford's link, it appears that McCain is the runaway vote missing winner in the current session of Congress.
I do find it interesting that Brian felt the need to go back to 1997 (why then?) to pump up McCain's percentage. Guess what. He wasn't running for president during that entire time.
I accept that candidates will miss votes, but c'mon, missing nearly 2/3 of them? That's one absentee senator.
Luz, you are an idiot. fighting for our country in the military isn't "work" ? wow, why don't you go to iraq and tell all our troops that. you are worthless - i hope you get rectal cancer so that in order for them to operate they must first remove your head from your anus. idiot
Congressional Quarterly also had this to say about the voting records of Clinton & Obama, in response to Hillary's comment that you could just compare their voting records to see which Democrat really represents "Change":
In truth, however, judging by their Senate records, voters could pick either one of them and get more or less the same package. ... the reality is that their Senate careers have been more similar than their campaigns would ever admit.
For one thing, their voting records are nearly indistinguishable. Although both have good working relationships with Republicans, Congressional Quarterly's annual vote studies show that Clinton and Obama both had strongly partisan voting records last year. In fact, both of them joined their fellow Democrats in mostly party-line roll calls more often than their own majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada. In the past year, Clinton voted with her party on 98 percent of the questions that pitted a majority of Democrats against a majority of Republicans, while Obama's score was 97 percent. Reid sided with his party on only 95 percent of those votes.
They're more party-partisan than their party leadership.
