by Berry Craig

MAYFIELD, Ky. – “John McCain defied all sense of geography Sunday by going north and south at the same time,” wrote Glen Johnson of the Associated Press. “The Republican presidential contender visited the battleground state of New Hampshire to attend a NASCAR race especially popular in GOP strongholds down South.”

Most of the race fans who came to watch the Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway near Loudon probably were “NASCAR Dads,” white, socially-conservative working-class men. A lot of them were big for Bush four years ago. A lot of them evidently favor Sen. McCain this time.

McCain didn’t mention jobs, the economy, NAFTA or CAFTA at the race track. He played the patriotism card. He usually does that around working class voters. I guess McCain figures it’s the best way to hide his long and well-documented anti-labor record.

Don’t get me wrong. I deeply admire McCain’s Vietnam War service. A navy pilot, he was shot down, captured and forced to endure almost six years of brutal treatment as a POW in North Vietnam.

I also deeply admire veterans like Jim Wasser of IBEW Local 176 in Joliet, Ill. He was second in command aboard Sen. John Kerry’s navy Swift Boat in South Vietnam.

In 2004, some Bush backers flat lied about Kerry’s distinguished combat record. The hatchet job helped Bush win.

“On the veterans’ issues, everybody respects McCain’s war service,” Wasser is quoted on the AFL-CIO’s Internet website. “We veterans never forget other veterans and we should never say anything bad about another veteran’s military service – that’s hallowed ground.”

Amen.

“….But I’m concerned about his Senate voting record and I’m worried about four more years of a continuation of a bad economy,” Wasser added. “….I want people to know about McCain’s agenda and to call on all vets and working people to let McCain know that his agenda is wrong on pocketbook issues.”

Amen again.

I don’t understand why any NASCAR Dad, especially one who belongs to a union, wouldn’t focus on pocketbook issues when he judges candidates. So what if McCain shows up at a stock car race? He has voted the union position on legislation only 16 percent of the time, according to the AFL-CIO’s Committee on Political Education. His 2007 COPE score is zero. On the other hand, Obama’s lifetime COPE score is 98 percent – and 100 percent in 2007.

McCain supports a national right-to-work law, and he opposes the Employee Free Choice Act. Obama is against right-to-work and is for the Employee Free Choice Act. In short, McCain has spent a career in politics making it hard on unions. Obama could hardly be more pro-union.

Okay, most NASCAR Dads don’t belong to unions. But few of them think NAFTA and CAFTA were good ideas. McCain does. He voted for both trade deals that have cost America tens of thousands of jobs, some of them probably lost by NASCAR Dads.

Obama wasn’t in the senate when NAFTA passed, but he wants to renegotiate the pact. He opposed CAFTA.

McCain wants working people to think he’s a “maverick” and a “change” candidate. But McCain has voted for Bush’s bills in the Senate about 90 percent of the time – 95 percent in 2007, according to the nonpartisan publication Congressional Quarterly.

McCain is so rich he didn’t remember how many houses he and his millionaire wife own. Since that gaffe, he’s had to cook up new ways to convince working stiffs that he’s regular guy. So “The Straight Talk Express” rolled up at a stock car race.

McCain told the drivers that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are big NASCAR fans. “You are their role models,” The Boston Globe’s Fluto Shinzawa quoted the candidate. “You are their role models. You are their heroes, and they are ours.”

A lot of GIs in the Middle East do catch NASCAR races on satellite TV. If they can, they watch from the first lap until the checkered flag waves. That’s what real race fans do.

McCain didn’t even stay for the first lap. He spoke briefly to the crowd, then “left just after the drivers started their engines but before they started racing,” Johnson wrote.

The symbolism was hard to miss, at least to this union-card carrying father who’s been hooked on NASCAR since Dale Jarrett’s daddy rubbed fenders with drivers like “Fireball” Roberts, “Fearless Freddie” Lorenzen, “Banjo” Matthews, Junior Johnson and Rex White.

McCain was just trolling for votes at the track. Style trumped substance as it so often does with the “straight talker.”

McCain chose not to repeat what he told the Des Moines Register newspaper last year: “NAFTA was a good idea….All you have to do is go to Detroit and see the thousands of trucks lined up every day or [go] to our Southern border….Have people lost jobs? Yes, they have, and they’re gonna lose jobs.”

That quote is the real McCain. There are many more like it on the AFL-CIO website. The next time NASCAR Dads go online to www.nascar.com they might also click on www.aflcio.org .

Anyway, McCain played NASCAR fan, like Bush, Daddy Bush and Ronald Reagan did when they dropped in at other stock car races. Not one of those union-busters stayed for a whole race either.

Meanwhile, at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway, the Republican-friendly NASCAR brass fawned all over McCain. The drivers gave him a standing ovation.

But I can imagine the snickering that went on behind the darkly-tinted windows of “The Straight Talk Express” as the big shiny bus exited the speedway. I can almost hear the McCains and their buttoned-down, khaki-trousered, Gucci-shod campaign staffers laughing and congratulating themselves for putting another one over on the folks in the Dale Jr. hats as deftly as Dale Sr. snookered enemy drivers with his famous crossover move.

Not everybody in the stands fell for McCain’s crossover con. “I was at the race and the reception McCain got was tepid at best,” a blogger commented on Shinzawa’s story, which was posted online. “You cannot 'peg' everybody, even NASCAR fans. I overheard one group say about McCain's first appearance (he appeared before the driver introductions and then just before the start of the race): ‘You just missed McCain. You didn't miss much.’ When somebody objected to that the response was ‘We[‘]re Obama up here.’”

So are several of us union motorheads down here in Kentucky.