Why McCain’s Autism-Vaccine Quackery Is Especially Disturbing
Pandering is part of presidential campaigns. The inevitability of pandering is why I turn a deaf ear to Obama’s anti-NAFTA talk in Ohio. I understand what his real beliefs are on trade, who his advisors are and that he’s not even saying now that he’d withdraw from NAFTA or anything extreme like that. It’s not perfect, but it’s politics.
But John McCain endorsed the thimerosal/vaccine explanation for autism. The idea that these mercury-based vaccines are responsible for autism has been floating around for about a decade. Too bad that every scientific study rejects this hypothesis. It’s basic quackery that should be rejected. And yet, McCain supports, or at least, is sympathetic to the idea. Now, do I think that this will really affect his presidency in any meaningful way? No, it’s not like there’s some silly policy he can endorse to appease the thimerosal hoards. But it’s still incredibly worrying.
Why would McCain endorse such crappy, BS, quacky science for seemingly no political gain. If there was some group he was pandering to, I wouldn’t mind. But there isn’t. This just reinforces what I already think of McCain. One, that he isn’t very intelligent. And two, that he acts in a highly emotional way with many of his positions and policies being shaped either by pure cynicism (look at this long record of flip flops) or to visceral reactions to what he sees around him. You can observe this in his campaign finance crusading. As the Times explained in its infamous Iseman story:
Mr. McCain appeared motivated less by the usual ideas about good governance than by a more visceral disapproval of the gifts, meals and money that influence seekers shower on lawmakers, Mr. Feingold said. “It had to do with his sense of honor,” he said. “He saw this stuff as cheating.”
The same impulse is expressed in his scorn and disdain for those who want to withdraw from Iraq or generally with those who are “cynical” about government. And this is probably what’s behind his autism stupidity. He sees horribly aggrieved parents, evil pharmaceutical companies abusing them, and then lying to cover up the truth. This fits his confrontational model of politics, whereby he needs to confront and destroy those who allow the citizenry to be cynical. It’s a question of honor and duty, not of weighing competing interests or things that most politicians think about.
Maybe I’m reading in to this too much, but let me say this. When I first read about it, I wasn’t surprised at all.
