The Case for McCain

In a hybrid of defense closing argument and political obituary, David Brooks in today's New York Times comes forward as a character witness for "a serious man prone to serious things."

Citing his candor, humility, "crusade" against corruption and, most of all, his "impressive" years as the Iraq war deteriorated, Brooks attempts to separate that John McCain from today's campaigner "without a groundbreaking argument about why he is different" who has had to "rely on tactical gimmicks to stay afloat."

Brooks says that failure comes "in part because of his Senate training and the tendency to take issues on one at a time—-in part, because of the foolish decision to run a traditional right-left campaign against Obama and, in part, because McCain has never really resolved the contradiction between the Barry Goldwater and Teddy Roosevelt sides of his worldview.

"One day he’s a small-government Western conservative; the next he’s a Bull Moose progressive. The two don’t add up--as we’ve seen in his uneven reaction to the financial crisis."

Such personal admiration is understandable and poignant but, as this past week has shown, can't be the crucial element in a voter's decision about who should lead us out of the mess of the Bush-Cheney years, of which McCain himself, going back to the 2000 primaries, is one of the victims.

But Brooks persists in his loyalty: "If McCain is elected, he will retain his instinct for the hard challenge. With that Greatest Generation style of his, he will run the least partisan administration in recent times."

To others, based on the campaign McCain is waging, that confidence is as misplaced as associating with the Greatest Generation someone who was five years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

McCain's Promise to Undo Bush

Those who ran the country into the ground for eight years sent John McCain out last night to ask voters for a do-over.

In a speech wherein the only Bush mentioned was Laura, the candidate Republicans rejected eight years ago rallied them to his cause of repairing the damage.

"I fight," he said, "to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us.

"We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger."

McCain might have extended his indictment of the Bush years to a much longer laundry list of lies, deceit, incompetence and criminal misjudgment, but he was in the awkward position of talking over the heads of the people who had authorized all that to ask for the votes of Americans who had suffered from it.

"We're going to recover the people's trust by standing up again to the values Americans admire," McCain promised in identifying himself as a "change" candidate.

"The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics."

In his contortions, McCain tried to look forward as he kept reverting to past Republican nostrums of lower taxes, less government and individual initiative.

Tonight's McCain was not the McCain of 2000, who refused to genuflect to the Religious Right and opposed tax cuts for the richest Americans. He is now papering over all those past differences with his history of devotion and service to his country.

But he was speaking for a party he was tempted to leave in disgust at the Bush-Cheney nightmare, and it would be at their own peril if voters forgot all that, as McCain apparently has, and let him bring back the usual suspects for another four years of misusing power.