What Would John McCain Do?

My assumption has been that if John McCain becomes President of the United States this would be an improvement over George W. Bush in some respects but not on the topic of national security policy where, if anything, McCain seems to be a more committed militarist than Bush. John Judis, who despite the TNR affiliation has sound views on such things, writes "I have liked John McCain ever since I met him almost a decade ago" and finds him a relatively congenial politician, nevertheless, he's very much opposed to McCain's current foreign policy views:

And therein lies my McCain dilemma--and, perhaps, yours. If, like me, you believe that the war in Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster, then you are likely disturbed by McCain's early and continuing support for it--indeed, he advocates sending more troops to that strife-torn land--and by his advocacy of an approach to Iran that could lead to another fruitless war. At the same time, he has shown an admirable willingness to reevalute his views when events have proved them wrong. The question, then, comes down to this: Is John McCain capable of changing his mind about a subject very close to his heart--again?

Judis ends up being fairly inconclusive on this question. My initial instinct when the I read the piece late last week was to say that I didn't see any particular reason to think McCain was likely to change his mind. Interestingly, however, I was at a Cato event today where two different old-school Republican realists seemed very optimistic that McCain might shift and adopt the much more reasonable views of his friend Chuck Hagel. Again, I don't really understand what the basis for this belief is, but it's undoubtedly in the air and something to keep an eye on over the next couple of years.

Comments

Again, I don't really understand what the basis for this belief is, but it's undoubtedly in the air and something to keep an eye on over the next couple of years.

On the other hand, something about McCain seems to inspire a wierd penchant for wishful thinking in folks that he will be what they want him to be. Remember the Washington Monthly cover story?

Posted by flippantangel | October 10, 2006 6:32 PM

No human being can possibly speak for 51% of the American public. The way you get to be President is by convincing enough people that, deep down inside, you really are what they hope you to be.

Posted by Steve | October 10, 2006 7:04 PM

Yes, John McCain is not the sum total of his past remarks and votes. He talks conservative, votes conservative, and he talks militaristic, and votes militaristic, but he really doesn't mean it.

Just like George W. Bush.

Posted by tristero | October 10, 2006 7:20 PM

I think people are vastly underrating how crazy and off the reservation today's Republican Party is. George Bush isn't an aberration; he's the natural product of the Southern Republican base, and that base is entirely unconnected to long-standing American traditions. People--including me, I admit--get warm and fuzzy over John McCain because he's not a Southern Republican and he's not self-evidently crazy. Given the choice between a Democratic victory in '08 in which the Southern Republicans maintained their stranglehold on the Republican Party and a Republican victory in '08 in which Southern Republicans were destroyed as an effective force in that party, I think I'd prefer the latter. The Reds scare the living fuck out of me.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 10, 2006 7:25 PM

Ditto what SomeCallMeTim said. Even if they lose the next few elections, the Republicans are bound to get back into power sooner. When they do, it'd be nice if they were a little more sane. It makes me wonder, though -- if this really is the thing to wish for (a more sane GOP), maybe we shouldn't be trying to pick off all those moderate, Northeastern republicans?

Posted by rented mule | October 10, 2006 7:31 PM

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if McCain was going to change his mind, wouldn't he have done it already? How much more wrong is he going to be proven?

Posted by strannix | October 10, 2006 7:32 PM

"The worst thing we could do is to accede to North Korea's demand for bilateral talks," McCain said. "When has rewarding North Korea's bad behavior ever gotten us anything more than worse behavior?"

The worst thing we can do is talk to someone? People hoping for sanity among Republicans would be wise to find another Republican.

Posted by Consumatopia | October 10, 2006 7:42 PM

If McCain hasn't figured it out by now, I can't imagine what set of events in Iraq would cause him to change his mind.

Posted by Nordy | October 10, 2006 7:49 PM

McCain has spent the past six years showing that anybody who holds him in respect has made a mistake. He's not nearly as bad as Bush, but he certainly acts like he's pissed that he didn't get to sell his soul to the Devil, like Bush.

That's on top of the sheer ridiculousness of assuming that anybody at TNR is worth listening to.

Posted by Barry | October 10, 2006 7:54 PM

But Tim, why don't you think McCain is crazier than even Cheney? Lots of other people do.

Posted by David Weman | October 10, 2006 8:01 PM

"he has shown an admirable willingness to reevalute his views when events have proved them wrong"

Wouldn't it be nice to have a President who could see the flaws in this sort of situation before he committed troups?
Or am I asking for donkeys -- vice ponies?
--ml

Posted by Martin Langeland | October 10, 2006 8:16 PM

The top priority in 08 is electing someone we are sure won't bomb or invade Iran. Once we do that the die is sort of cast, isn't it? We need to take some steps back from the brink. McCain does not strike me as trustworthy in that department.

Posted by MQ | October 10, 2006 8:37 PM

People who admire McCain know nothing of his record. McCain has been a US Senator for twenty six years. That is long time to be one of the priviledged few in position to make US policy.

In that time the US government has, by any measure, more than tripled in size. More money, more programs, more everything. Like any good Senator McCain has made sure that his state benefited from this increase in federal spending.

Yet in all that time McCain never once voted to pay for any of that increased spending. Think about that.

McCain is eager for the benefits that come with higher spending but unwilling to pay for it. Instead his *choice* of how to pay for his pay raises and his tax cuts is to lay that burden onto your children and grandchildren.

Now he is saying we need a larger military. But once again McCain is unwilling to pay for it.

I have no respect for a man who has been at the helm of power for as long as McCain has and is unwilling to provide the leadership or make the decisions that his position requires.

Posted by ken | October 10, 2006 8:41 PM

"I don't really understand what the basis for this belief is"

Easy. They are trying to sell McCain to you--to the country at large. He's Bush's chosen successor.

But Iraq is a huge anchor dragging down everything Bush touches.

So they have to pretend McCain is changing his mind about Iraq.

In other words: they're lying to you about McCain. Count on a lot more of that in the future.

Posted by kid bitzer | October 10, 2006 8:42 PM

McCain's comment du jour -- that Bill Clinton's North Korea policy created the conditions that led directly to that government's testing of a nuclear bomb -- is deranged beyond belief. Leave aside, for a moment, the fact that George Bush and the Republicans have controlled all branches of our government for the past six years. If McCain had such a pressing problem with Clinton's North Korea policy, he's had ample time to offer an alternative: the 2000 campaign, the 1,000,000 tv appearances he's made since Bill Clinton left office six friggin' years ago.

What an asshole.

Posted by BrklynLibrul | October 10, 2006 9:36 PM

Apparently, what John McCain would do is guest blog for that warhawk douchebag at Captain's Quarters.

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/008256.php

Posted by Gene | October 10, 2006 10:18 PM

McCain is busy selling out to the theocrats, looters and neo-imperialists who run the Republican party these days. Once he buys himself the presidential nomination in '08 there will be none of that legendary (or more likely mythological) 'straight-talker' left.

Posted by STS | October 10, 2006 11:41 PM

I doubt he'll run in 2008, but if he does he'll be killed off in the primaries. He'll be too old (older than Reagan in 80), and not well loved among the Republican base. A diageo/hotline poll from earlier this year found that in a hypothetical head-to-head primary matchup against Rudy Giuliani, the gay-loving, abortion-loving, Italian Catholic New York adulterer not only outscored McCain, but his base of support *was* the Republican base. The only people who adore McCain are a certain kind of beltway elite along with a certain kind of white collar Republican, and conservative Independent. McCain has a nasty tendency to piss off crucial segments of the GOP primary electorate (as well as a nasty temper generally, which he is not so good at containing in public). The time for McCain's generation to be president has come and gone. He would have made a fine challenger to Bill Clinton in the 1990s, but times have changed.

It will either be Giuliaini or some wingnut. I predict it will be Giuliani in 2008, and some wingnut (against President HRC) in 2012 (Republicans will learn the same wrong lesson from the 08 election the Democrats learned in 1968).

Posted by Linus | October 10, 2006 11:48 PM

It depends on what sort of reality you care about

The problem with this idea expressed by your two old-school Republican Cato Institute "realists" (and, God, isn't that collection of characteristics a rather extreme oxymoron) that McCain will surely be brought by real-world events to the more realistic views of Hagel, is that anyone not already set straight by the reality of the Iraq of the last three years is not set-straightable by reality. Of course, what they probably meant is that, of course, McCain already really knows that the whole project in Iraq, and not just the execution, has been a fiasco, but that he finds it convenient to pretend otherwise until after this pretence has gotten him safely elected President.

The illusion that policy and politics, getting elected and what you then do with the power that getting elected confers, are two separable realities, is certainly not confined to these two "realists". The reality is that you become the evil that you do, whatever the original ends for which you apply foul means. A McCain willing to espouse policies that get even more Americans and Iraqis killed unnecessarily, just to become President, is not going to be able to suddenly forego such evil-doing after the election. The path that led him to sell out our servicemen to get elected would not get any easier after he was elected. He would be taking over disasters on all fronts in our foreign policy, and all important fronts in domestic policy as well. What miracle, exactly, will so ease his path as to allow him the luxury of repudiating the lies about Iraq that got him elected? Nixon had no illusions about the winnability of Vietnam either, but once having demagogued against the sensible opponents of a war he himself knew full well to be senseless, he could never bring himself to abandon such a useful club with which to beat his political opponents, however much such beatings served also to kill our servicemen and degrade our position in the world. Most of our soldiers killed in that war were killed after Nixon had already decided that the war was unwinnable. If McCain needed the club of a foolish war, but one useful for painting its sensible opponents as weaklings and traitors, to get himself elected, would he not continue to need it to get himself re-elected, and then get his successor elected in 2016? And, as the original foolish war loses its ability to frighten the electorate, and gives rise instead to cynicism, would he not need fresh, even more dangerous, therefore even more foolish, wars to maintain the electorate in the state of perpetual terror needed to insure continued electoral success?

Realism works as a guarantee of reasonable behavior only insofar as someone has reasonable goals. But if someone is realistically working towards his own power, rather than the common good of this nation, then realistic behavior on his terms will lead this country down a path of savage and violent unreason.

Posted by Glen Tomkins | October 10, 2006 11:52 PM

I know it's a very minor issue in the grand scheme of things, nothing that should influence one's Presidential voting in any way, but I cannot forgive McCain for his absurd self-righteous campaign to shut down the UFC.

Posted by Peter | October 10, 2006 11:57 PM

I think it's a mistake to read what McCain is saying these days as anything other than political. The man has committed 100% to securing the Republican nomination for President, which means he's not trying to solve problems, he's trying to win votes.

More here:

http://thepremise.com/archives/10/09/2006/331

Posted by Mark | October 11, 2006 12:30 AM

Also - you know - there are two types of politicians capable of reaching the White House: the naturals (who can play by ear), and the learneds (who may not be born with perfect pitch, but through willpower and desire can get relative pitch; Nixon was one of these). Mr. McCain has a certain talent for inserting himself into the news cycle on matters of reform - as a "maverick" - but he is not now nor will he ever be White House material. Giuliani struck just the right note in recent weeks with his statements discouraging people (as in Republicans) to hold Bill Clinton responsible for the threat of Islamist terrorism. He understands that as "America's Mayor" he has the latitude (with the GOP) to be bold and contrarian (in that way), and it wins him points with an Independent electorate weary of Republican zealotry (and crackpottery) but also not yet likely to trust the Democrats on national security (until HRC becomes the de facto leader of the Democratic Party). Mr. McCain meanwhile is not talented enough to be a natural and not disciplined enough to be a learned, and when he starts blaming Bill Clinton on North Korea it is liable to alienate Independents (who want national unity now), and not win the hearts and minds of conservatives (who is does not have the stamina or the ear to win over).

Posted by Linus | October 11, 2006 12:46 AM

Oh please. In 2000 Republicans pretended that they didn't realize that Bush was stupid, unprepared for the presidency, and uninterested in changing that. They still voted for him.
If you're telling me that after 8 devastating years of Bush as President, they'll vote for bat-shit crazy McCain, who's a transparent liar and ass-kisser... if you tell me that, I'm afraid I'll have to say I agree with you.

Posted by Marky | October 11, 2006 2:46 AM

Shorter Yglesias:
It might be the case that John McCain will change his mind. On the other hand, he might not.

Posted by garuda | October 11, 2006 5:46 AM

McCain is a foreign policy hack and nutjob, simple as that.

But he won't get the nomination, even though the press fellates him at every opportunity, and enough Democrats cup his balls at the same time. He's a Senator, and he's done too much as a Senator to piss people off. Plus he'll be too old, his health isn't good, and if he does go to the primaries, he'll be beaten up by every wannabe Fundiepublican.

Giuliani, on the other hand, may be a gay-loving adulterer from New York, but to the people who pull the strings (as opposed to the fundies who'll bleat, then turn out and vote) he's ideal, since his record is confined to New York, and only New Yorkers have a sense of him that extends beyond 9/11.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | October 11, 2006 5:49 AM

The spookiest thing right now is the thing that's getting the least attention: War with Iran, and McCain's stand doesn't seem reassuring. Chris Hedges is worried. The former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times says a U.S. carrier group is headed for the Straits of Hormuz and will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. "It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it," he writes, warning about the "strange, twilight mentality that now grips most of the civilian planners who are barreling us towards a crisis of epic proportions." Will Iran be Bush's October surprise? Will we survive his madness?

Posted by Madison Guy | October 11, 2006 8:11 AM

You know, its still 2 years until the Presidential election and still over 1 until the primaries. Given the possible shifts in power between now and then I'd say its entirely possible for McCain to change his mind and still avoid the flip flop accusations. Even if he changes his mind completely on Iraq he'd be a terrible president only slightly better than Bush.

Posted by crack | October 11, 2006 8:51 AM

There's going to be a lot of talk in the MM about how leftists should get behind McCain--he might even find endorsements from hawkish media institutions like the Washington Post, Slate, TNR, etc.

But it is essential that Democrats continue to hammer him on his unapologetic militarism throughout the primaries. If he wins the primaries by defending his views, then he can't move to the center come general election time. If he loses the primary, then the GOP loses their strongest candidate.

Posted by ludwig | October 11, 2006 9:39 AM

"Giuliani, on the other hand, may be a gay-loving adulterer from New York, but to the people who pull the strings (as opposed to the fundies who'll bleat, then turn out and vote) he's ideal, since his record is confined to New York, and only New Yorkers have a sense of him that extends beyond 9/11."

I respectfully disagree. I'm not sure many of the Beltway and corporate elites (beyond perhaps the Bush cabal itself - Rove is a bright man) have signed onto Team Giuliani yet, although they shouldn't object to him. (The next president won't be as corporate friendly [in a general sense] as this one, but many CEOs will still always prefer a Republican to a Democrat.)

The two principal arguments against the viability of a Giuliani candidacy are that religious conservatives are already against him (an argument which as I indicated polling contradicts), or that they will be once they know the True Rudy (I was expecting someone to make this latter argument). But of course the second argument is hogwash too. We live in a media-saturated society. Even Fox News covered Giuliani's messy divorce, and his stated views on abortions rights and gay rights are well known (I've heard them discussed almost whenever the possibility of a Giuliani candidacy comes up on the cable news and talk radio shout shows).

What Democrats I think tend to misunderstand is that conservatives are willing to overlook the pecadilos of a charismatic, and Giuliani is nothing if not a natural. Remember: Reagan was divorced. (This weakness is not limited to conservatives. Why did feminists defend Bill Clinton in the 1990s? Do you think the wooden Al Gore would've gotten the same treatment if similiar allegations had been made against him?)

Giuliani will have to compromise his position on abortion rights though (to win the Republican primary), and I would not underestimate the possibility that in this serious time (when Iraq is descending into chaos which could spread regionally, when we may be on the precipice of peak oil, when we're definitely on the verge of exploding entitlement spending) abortion may be the deciding issue in the 2008 election. For the first time since Roe V Wade, we have a Supreme Court that could overturn it, and Independents (especially women) will not want to elect a president who waffles on the issue. The broad center of the American electorate wants no new federal restrictions on abortion. This is at least part of the reason I'm predicting an HRC victory.

Posted by Linus | October 11, 2006 1:21 PM

Incidentally, I believe that culture issues (abortion in particular, but also gay rights) will also scuttle the netroots-powered candidacy of Mark Warner. As governor of a southern state, he was forced to the center on abortion (which will be spun effectively by the HRC campaign as radical conservatism), and to the right on gay issues (which will be portrayed honestly by HRC's surrogates in the national gay rights organizations as too extreme for a Democratic presidential candidate [probably in exchange for a back room promise by HRC's people that she will pursue ENDA in her second term]). Warner statements on abortion will leave him vulnerable to attacks from the left, as will his substantive record on gay rights (he signed the harshest anti-gay-union bill in the country). Anyone entertaining the idea of dumping their hard-earned money into a Warner bid would be better off taking that long-imagined trip to the Bahamas.

Posted by Linus | October 11, 2006 2:24 PM

John Judis on McCain reminds me of me on Bush after his tenure as governor of Texas. One on one, he seemed to be a congenial "guy" and maybe someone worth partying with before he cleaned up. But his policies? I don't know McCain but his politics stink, including his key role letting Bush rid the United States of that pesky habeas corpus.

Posted by Joe Nick | October 11, 2006 10:44 PM