Jeffrey Simpson offers a good marshalling of the facts.
There are American predispositions which contribute to this fiscal irresponsibility.
First is the fact that once "the boyz are in hawm's way," you are not even allowed (through intense social pressure) to discuss trivial points like the fortunes being squandered to support a pointless war. War is holy, untouchable stuff, not to be besmirched by discussions of mundane stuff like sound economics.
It's one of the rather more fanatical tenets of the American Civic Religion.
Second is the widely-prevailing American attitude that "you can have it all and have it now," the financing of doing so being consigned to boring accounting procedures. Look at the housing mess after waves of 100% plus mortgages crashed.
Third is a very short-term way of looking at things. If money is coming back in tax cuts, that's good regardless of the implications for two or five or ten years from now.
Fourth is a widespread belief that Washington is actually like an occupying power, a foreign money-sucking thing that we're all be better off without (in all matters except for war). After all, the American Revolution started, not over high-sounding principles, but in large part an unwillingness to pay taxes required for the Seven Years War that had directly benefited the Colonists.
McCain mostly has views right in line with these attitudes, despite the fact he has occasionally said or briefly stood for something a little out of step. For McCain such thoughtful moments are just brief burps along the way. He is an unrepentant servant of America Empire in the tradition of "Remember the Maine!"
He is actually a rather dangerous man for the world as a whole.
