Today, Republican presidential candidate John McCain was asked at an Iowa town hall meeting what he would do to reform family law to ensure children are guaranteed equal access both to their fathers and mothers, following a divorce.
A questioner asked McCain whether as president he “would be bold enough to address the issue of equal access to children for fathers that have gone through divorce.”
The Republican presidential candidate responded, “I’m sorry to disappoint you, I am not going to overturn divorce court decisions. That’s why we have courts and that’s why people go to court and get a divorce. If I as President of the United States said this decision has to be overturned without the proper appeals process then I would be disturbing our entire system of government… For me to stand here before all these people and say that I’m going declare divorces invalid because someone feels that they weren’t treated fairly in court, we are getting into a, uh, uh, TAR BABY of enormous proportions.”
The term “tar baby” is considered by some to have racist overtones. According to Wikipedia, a “tar baby” is metaphorically any “sticky situation” that is only aggravated by efforts to solve it. More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_baby
McCain later apologized — not for allowing babies to be separated from their fathers, but rather for using a racially-charged phrase about a tar baby.
McCain squandered a golden opportunity to open a discussion about the devastating effects divorce has on children, and the need to use the democratic process to seek changes in the nation’s family laws. How could this be perceived as “disturbing the entire system of government?” McCain took the question to mean the intervention in family court decisions. Could not the question have been answered as a call for legal reform? Is family law so sacrosanct that even democratically enacted reforms (or merely advocating for them) cannot be explored? Is the stability of the “system of government” that McCain cites more of a priority to him than the fathers and children that need each other so dearly?
Children of divorce are routinely denied access to their fathers. These children think of their fathers as an equal part of their identity; they came from Dad, and in divorce are now separated from him as a matter of course. When fathers are torn away from their kids, a part of the child’s identity is also torn. This is corrosive to the child’s emotional health, and exiles fathers to the periphery of their kids’ lives. McCain just won’t get involved — won’t even discuss family law reform — because this might upset his apple cart: the support which he thinks he will derive from women voters. Do male voters have no memory, that they wouldn’t reject him because of this?
See the video of this doofus in action:
http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/politics/2007/03/16/mccain.tar.cnn
