John McCain

Let the King Reign

Yesterday’s Times profile on the history of that quintessentially American tradition — the peaceful, loyal succession — ought to raise a question for today’s Democrats. Has the tradition been followed in this administration, in fact as well as in form? And if not, what can we say about it?

Consider Senator McCain’s dignified concession speech that night three years ago, offered in the best tradition of small-r republican magnanimity, in which McCain embraced his opponent and acknowledged the President-Elect’s mandate for change… to a chorus of boos. Since then, it’s fair to say that congressional Republicans, and presidential candidates, have treated Barack Obama’s presence in the White House as an imposition, an aberration to be corrected, rather than anything to which he might be entitled by virtue of 69 million votes (and 9-and-a-half-million-vote margin over his opponent). We’ve been reminded that America is a center-right nation, with the implication that Obama’s win is something to be explained away; heard trumped-up charges of voter fraud aimed at delegitimizing the process that gave him his position; and dealt with a Congress that’s gleefully broken its own rules and ended longtime truces to block the President at every turn.

If President Obama ever had a honeymoon phase to his presidency, we might say — as seems to be the usable thesis of Ron Suskind’s otherwise factually-challenged, narrator-driven tome on Obama’s first few years in office — that he squandered it on an unnecessarily divisive issue, healthcare reform, when he could’ve taken bold, consensus-generating steps to right the economy. But even this evaluation should be tempered by a reminder of how quickly the Republican opposition rushed to Total War on the President.

This is a story we should play up — that for the past three years, America has functionally lacked a loyal opposition, one that works against the President but within expected norms, and votes against his interests, but offers their own affirmative plans for action in response. Rather than accepting the consequences of eight years of mismanagement under Bush, and acceding to the result of a lawful election, the Republican Party offered us that first part of Tennyson’s famous line, glorifying the fight, without the peace that comes thereafter:

Blow trumpet! he will lift us from the dust.
Blow trumpet! live the strength and die the lust!
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign.

This is a case we can make in 2012, provided it’s mixed in equal parts with a reminder of those positive plans the minority derailed for their own benefit, and at great cost to the country. And we can start with the unemployment extension.

Mitch Daniels Wades Into the Muck, Following McCain’s Now-Cold Tracks

Here’s the best indication yet that Mitch Daniels will run for President: he’s already started mortgaging his values.

Despite his promise of a “truce,” Daniels issued a statement on Friday affirming that he would sign a bill de-funding Planned Parenthood, should the bill cross his desk. Promising to commit political capital to a divisive, pointless, and abusively anti-human rights act solely to placate social conservatives proves the truce is over.

It also suggests Governor Daniels has begun the hard task of shedding his moderate credentials, an effort that only makes sense if undertaken to appease the increasingly radicalized Republican Party. If that’s the tack he’ll take, though, Daniels will do nothing more than reprise John McCain’s tragic role: that of the good man, who loses himself to lose an election. The American public has rejected extremist Republicanism, time-and-time again. 2010 is not to the contrary, as Daniels will find, should he continue with this pathetic re-invention.

John McCain Probes the Contours of the Judicial Debate

From an e-mail to supporters:

Today, I’d like to ask your opinion about the type of nominee you would like to see replace Justice Stevens. Country First PAC has prepared a short, three-question survey and I encourage you to share your opinion by following this link.

It’s a lovely little push-poll, designed to reinforce the idea that any Democratic nominee to the federal bench is per se liberal, and must necessarily play fast and loose with the Constitution, but it goes a little far, even by conservative standards, in pushing this myth. We see that treating the Constitution as a document “open to interpretation” is concomitant with “legislating from the bench,” and the antithesis of judicial restraint. If this is in fact the conservative position — that the Constitution is not subject to interpretation, anywhere — the “center” of the debate is now further rightward than I recall, and more grounded in fiction.

The federal Constitution is not exhaustive. And this is a feature, not a bug. Many state constitutions do, in fact, set out at length the detail and meaning of every provision. But these documents are almost always incredibly dense, only ever examined by practitioners or legislators, and cripplingly restrictive. I spent the fall working for a New York legislator on good government issues; at almost every turn, our efforts to push bipartisan, noncontroversial measures ran up against constitutional limitations that the original drafters must surely never have intended, but which now, in the fullness of time, operated to bar measures they themselves would have favored, had they been confronted with the specific question. By contrast, the federal Constitution is meant to be accessible, and simple, embodying a skeleton of principles to which time and concurrent actors can give meaning.

Accordingly, the document must be interpreted to acquire meaning, and therefore value. The Founding Generation acknowledged as much. See Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803) (“It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is”). If you dispute this principle, your argument is with the men who wrote the Constitution, not with me, and not with amorphous “liberals.”

The interesting question, therefore, is what interpretation is permissible, and how far it should be permitted to expand upon the way the document worked in the first instance.

However, the minute conservatives allow their supporters to ask that question, they’ve already lost. Like so many other conservative positions, the far-right hard-line against judicial “interpretation” isn’t meant to be an argument in itself; it’s meant to be a conversation-stopper, confining friend and foe alike to a false choice between two equally untenable, almost Manichean opposites, and foreclosing the kind of complicated debates that they, and their supporters, may not be able to win. As in, if we acknowledge that our conception of equal protection has grown over time, and had to, what’s to stop it from continuing to grow?

We’ll likely win the next Supreme Court debate, if only becausethe Democrats still have a 59-seat majority in the Senate (and they probably won’t need it: Sotomayor was confirmed 68-31, with many key Republicans breaking ranks). But this is just a battle. A true victory, signaling a rout for the other side in the overarching war of ideas, would reframe the debate, and cause the public, right and left, to acknowledge that the Supreme Court is probably more complex than the Republican Party wants them to think.

John McCain’s Old Habit

At the best of times, John McCain is a good man — even a great one. But the sad truth is that much of the moral fiber that makes him great, and distinguishes him from the vast swath of his party, seems to come and go with the political cycle. An example.

After winning the nomination in 2008, McCain took a bold step, and eliminated the phrase “Democrat Party” from his party’s platform. By way of background, this shortening of the Democratic Party’s name, designed to emphasize the harsh “rat” sound and otherwise convey disrespect, has a long history in the Republican’s vocabulary of derision. Regular use dates at least to Joe McCarthy, but it was the 1996 Republican Party, and George W. Bush, who re-injected the term into modern discourse. Restoring to his Democratic opponents the respect of using their own name, then, was an extraordinary, if subtle, act of political courage, and a sign of the true class of which John McCain is capable.

You can probably see where this is going. From an e-mail to supporters:

My Friend,
The 2010 election offers all Americans – and especially Republicans – a critical choice. We can fight for the principles we believe in, or watch as Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress take our nation down a costly, destructive path.

McCain’s use of the term is half-hearted — he recants of it later (“Inconceivably the Obama White House and Democratic Congressional leaders…“) — but it’s a sure sign of how tough things must be in Arizona. The last time we saw McCain slip into hyper-negative mode was February of ’08, as the general election campaign kicked off and McCan began to face (scurrilous) allegations of impropriety with campaign staff. Palin would later carry this torch for McCain.

Democrat Party. Socialism. “Liberal fascism.” Death panels. ObamaCare. ObamaCrats. “Hopey changey.” This rhetoric, par for the course from senior almost GOP policymakers, amounts to a slur on the political process, and proof that the GOP continues to win by pandering to the lowest common denominator. McCain used to be better than that, intermittently, sometimes.

Fears of a Backslide

America’s briefly improving relationship with war is in danger of a serious backslide — all thanks to a single abortive attack on an airliner.

The would-be bomber apparently had ties with a number of former Yemeni Guantanamo detainees, released during the Bush years and known to have returned to terrorism. Although some former detainees have indeed “returned” to terrorism since their release, reports of terror recidivism have been greatly exaggerated, as even the initial publisher concedes.

Recidivism is surely undesirable, but it’s also probably unavoidable. There’s no such thing as a perfect criminal justice system: the question must be in which direction we want to deflect the likelihood of error. Only death or permanent detention can guarantee a suspect’s complete removal from the battlefield. The former is unacceptable off the battlefield; the latter may be appropriate in some, but not all cases. Contra Lieberman, McCain, et al, an utter halt to the release of detainees bearing a particular nationality constitutes a gross overreaction, dependent on the mortgaging of our most sacred values. The answer to both cases — when to release, and when to detain — must be tied to individual merit. Conservatives should accept, as the price of civilization, the fact that some guilty men may go free, although we must strive mightily to minimize those cases. And liberals should accept, as the price of a flawed world, the fact that some detainees should never be released, except into federal custody to await a federal trial, provided the evidence permits a certainty of conviction somewhat higher than that provided by your average grand jury indictment.

And in all cases, we must remember that often-forgotten lesson of the war on terror, and indeed every war: that overreactions have consequences, both in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of those members of the world community still waiting to choose sides. We deserve to win and to survive, but we must prove it, every day of our lives.

Republican Party Fails its Own Test

For the Republican Party, the gap between image and reality widened again yesterday, with the RNC’s decision to promulgate a “test” for whether or not a candidate can be properly termed a “Republican,” and receive the party’s blessing. Apparently, following a bit of complex calculus derived by Pres. Reagan himself, any candidate ought to meet eight of  the ten following criteria before asking for RNC money, or thinking themselves safe from inevitable betrayal, without regard for the nuances that animate American regional politics (“Scozzafava-ing”). Without further ado, the requirements:

1. Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill
2. Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare
3. Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation<!–
4. Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check
5. Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants
6. Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges
7. Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat
8. Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act
9. Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion
10. The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership

Well, let’s see how recent leaders stack up!

• Pres. Ronald Reagan (FAIL): loses 1 (increased deficit); 7 (met with Soviet leaders without preconditions, funded terrorists); 9 (did little but talk on abortion).
• Pres. George W. Bush (FAIL): loses 1 (increased deficit); 5 (pushed for “amnesty”); 6 (stalled on “the surge” until McCain pushed him into it).
• Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) (PASS): loses 1 (voted for the bailout); 5 (pushed for “amnesty”).

This is easy, because almost every Republican in the last 20 years will fail #1, at least. Remember, contrary magazine-style “purity quizzes” notwithstanding, Republicans treat McCain as the emblematic “RINO,” and Reagan as God himself. Please, add your own!

Choosing the Villain

Do we forgive John McCain for unleashing the horror that is Sarah Palin on an unsuspecting world? In my mind, yes — but for Andrew Sullivan, the answer is a resounding no:

If [McCain] had any sense of responsibility, he would resign. And if the Washington media had any sense of responsibility, it would never invite him on TV again without demanding he take responsibility for what he nearly did to the national security of this country. No one who put [Palin] near the nuclear button should have a future in public life.

I think that’s probably the wrong instinct. Admittedly, though, the answer depends on what kind of story you want, and whom you choose to cast as the villain. In the myth of the fall, do you blame Eve for biting the apple, Satan for tempting her, or God for executing his promised judgment?

Sullivan blames McCain — the Eve, the player with the last best chance to avoid the stated harm. That’s fine, but it ignores the evidence: McCain’s impressive leadership before and immediately after the campaign, and the numerous insiders who insisted, even then, that the pick was forced on him. If we want to assign blame, we shouldn’t gravitate to the entrapped, also-victimized middle man. Let’s go farther up the chain of causality, to the source of the original evil. I’m looking at you, Schmidt.

Republicans to Respect: John McCain

It seems almost an oxymoron these days. But a recent e-mail to supporters, questioning current health care proposals, puts Senator McCain (R-AZ) head and shoulders above his compatriots in honesty.

He pushes the urgency of healthcare, and some values that he shares with the Democrats –

After a month of hosting and attending town hall meetings with my constituents in Arizona and around the country, I know that Americans want health care reform. But what is so very clear to me is that Americans want to reform health care in the right way. I am more convinced than ever that we must fix what is wrong with our health care system while doing no harm to the parts that work well.

This means we need to have malpractice reform, we must emphasize wellness and fitness, give people the option to get the health insurance of their choice and bring the cost of health care under control. [Emphasis his. - Ed.]

But backs away from the current plan, because of its cost.

I am very troubled by the potential cost of the President’s outlined plans.  I know that you are very concerned with the national debt and a projected $9 trillion deficit.  <strong>The prospective cost of the President’s plan could reach $2 trillion</strong>, and  frankly, our country simply cannot afford this price tag.

I will not support heath care reform that adds to the out-of-control spending spree the Democrats in Congress have gone on this year. And I ask you to join me in rejecting the addition of $2 trillion of debt by signing this petition right away.

Government-run health care is something we simply cannot afford, and I know that the majority of Americans agree with me that it is not the quality of health care that needs reforming, but the cost.

There’s room for legitimate disagreement on the financial impact of healthcare. I’ll go so far as to say that the addition to the deficit is something to worry about, a concern I can only reconcile out of respect for the fierce urgency of the issue given new census data, and the conviction that prophylactic medicine, freely available, will relieve burdens elsewhere on the system. But Senator McCain’s point is honest, and well-taken.

Even though the Republicans have only recently, apparently, discovered the mounting deficit, we should have a debate about it, to the exclusion of distractions like “socialism,” “rationing,” and “death panels.” There’s just one small problem: the only period during which McCain had plausible claim to be the leader of the Republican Party coincides with the only period during which his image as a respected elder statesman lapsed, under a wash of bizarre negative campaigning and, of course, his association with Sarah Palin. McCain is well on his way to restoring his bipartisan bona fides, a process he began almost immediately after the election. The road back for the Republicans, though, may be longer.

John McCain is a Far, Far Better Man than Any of his Constituents

Story of his political career — and especially the last election. In a better world with a better Republican Party, he would’ve made a fine President for 2000-2008.

But seriously, who are these people? I look at town hall-goers like this woman, claiming that spending money is unconstitutional just because they disagree with its use, and I see the death of constitutional democracy.

Election 2008, Five Weeks Later: Rev. Wright & Joe the Plumber

Although both issues are moot, yesterday there were two big stories on two of Election 2008′s biggest non-candidate “characters,” Joe the Plumber & the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. First, ABC played the ad that the McCain camp prepared, but never aired, indicting Barack Obama for his connection with Jeremiah Wright:

I’m unsure of the damage this could have done. The punchline (“…when no-one else is watching”) is powerful, and the dichotomy would have appealed to those already in the tank for McCain. How far it would have gone beyond that, though, I don’t know: apart from its obvious nastiness, which would have repulsed more than a few voters, there’s a degree to which Reverend Wright has been misquoted. Of course, in post-Rove’s Law America, that may not have mattered. But for the full context…

For God’s sake, in the now-famous quote, the man was speaking in the prospective! Read in context, the quote would be, “[Should America oppress African-Americans again, as it did in the 1800s, n]ot God bless America, God damn America!” As I was told by my volunteer host on the night of November 3rd, to those who knew Reverend Wright (as she did), the notion that he was somehow unpatriotic was shocking. A little angry, yes: but given the circumstances through which he’d lived (she went on), this much was understandable. America never heard the full truth on Reverend Wright, and maybe she never will.

——

Moving on, Glenn Beck (a truly reprehensible human being) interviewed Joe the Plumber, who had some harsh words for John McCain, though not as harsh as the Huffington Post would have you believe, and glowing praise for Sarah Palin:

And I asked him pretty direct questions [on the bailout] and some of the answers you guys are going to receive, you know, they appalled me, absolutely. You know, I was angry. In fact, I wanted to get off the bus after I talked to him [. . . . .]

Sarah Palin’s absolutely the real deal. You know, I only got to spend a short amount of time with her but, you know, it was been asked if I felt any presence when I was with John McCain or Barack Obama. You know, with Sarah Palin, I don’t want to say I felt a presence but she definitely had energy

No surprise there. Joe’s parroting Mark Levin & Rush Limbaugh, which is exactly what I expected him to do. The notion that Joe was ever some “regular guy” representing “average America,” a key insight into the mind of the swing voter, continues to boggle my mind. He may be middle-class white male America, but that’s all, and that – at least alone – is not America any more. I won’t miss Joe. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll have to miss his icon, Sarah the Hockey-Mom.