A Libertarian Critique of John McCain January 28, 2008

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2008/01/08/John_McCain_Myth_of_a_Maverick

Reason Magazine Editor-In-Chief Matt Welch offers a libertarian's critique of Arizona Senator and Republican Presidential candidate John McCain.

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John McCain is one of the most familiar figures in American politics, a figure with great appeal to many. However, his concrete governing philosophy and actual track record have been left unexamined. Matt Welch's new book McCain: The Myth of a Maverick gives a flesh-and-bones political portrait of a man onto whom people project their own ideological fantasies. It is the first realistic assessment of what a John McCain presidency might look like.

Welch lays out the root cause of the senator's worldview: his personal transformation from underachieving youth to war hawk, in which he used the "higher power" of American nationalism to save his life and soul - Cato Institute

Matt Welch is editor in chief of Reason magazine.

From 2002 to 2006, Welch worked at Reason as an associate editor and media columnist. From 2002 to 2004, he also wrote a regular "Letter from California" column for Canada's National Post newspaper and contributed to the Online Journalism Review; WorkingForChange.com (for whom he covered Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential campaign); and the now-defunct Los Angeles tech/biz magazine Zone News.

Welch's work has appeared in The Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, Los Angeles Daily News, Orange County Register, LA Weekly, ESPN.com, Salon.com, Wired, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Daily Star of Beirut, and dozens of other publications.

Before 1998, Welch lived for eight years in Central Europe, where he co-founded the region's first post-communist English-language newspaper, Prognosis, worked as UPI's Slovakia correspondent and managed the Budapest Business Journal.