The Trouble With Principle

David Broder, in the course of a much-better-than-usual column, nonetheless feels the need to praise Saint John McCain as "the most stubbornly principled person in the Republican field. He is being punished now for saying what he believes about Iraq and immigration, among other things." Note that more principles than Mitt Romney is a low bar to pass, so it's entirely plausible that McCain is, in fact, more principled than the other major GOP contenders. That said, the fact that the most principled contender's principledness doesn't extent to such minor matters as taxes & the federal budget should indicate that there are some limits here.

But perhaps to the point, though John McCain's views on national security (bombs away!) certainly are principled, they're also disastrously wrong. Like Bill Kristol, who backed him in 2000 for just this reason, McCain has spent the past 10 or so years being really enthusiastic about war -- there's no foreign policy problem he won't address by starting a war. He's totally principled about it, and he's even right sometimes, but it's in a stopped clock is right twice a day kind of way.

Comments

I'm not willing to concede that McCain is principled.

Look at his noisiness, followed by his mysterious and unnecessary cave-in, on torture. He still says that torture is bad, but he didn't care to act as though it were really all that important.

I think he is more interested in burnishing the Straight Talk(TM) brand than pursuing any actual principles. And he chose to go with escalation, so that's what he's sticking with.

Plus, as you point out, even if he is principled, you know who else had principles? That's right-- Hitler.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | July 19, 2007 10:11 AM

Plus, as you point out, even if he is principled, you know who else had principles? That's right-- Hitler.

Exactly. Giuliani, for example, is deeply principled; they're just very bad principles Romney too -- self-preservation is his principle.

Posted by goethean | July 19, 2007 10:15 AM

Pricipled? Sen. McCain? Pfaugh! Humbug!

The man was literally tortured in a prison camp, and then compromised on... torture!

He is the paradigm of the unprincipled, purely political, disastrously wrong-headed flip-flop. And I say that as a political wonk who greatly appreciates the art of compromise, and scoffs at "flip-flopper" mud-slinging. But there are some things that are simply unforgivable to compromise on.

Posted by SGEW | July 19, 2007 10:47 AM

You read the wapo today and did not notice the item on Bush and the fate of the child health program? It's a "philosophical" thing.
Thoughts?

Posted by bird | July 19, 2007 10:50 AM

McCain has become a sad sack: a genuine hero who stumbled.

Robert Frost wrote:

Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood.

He didn't fall as low or as vulgarly as Duke Cunningham, but to see McCain shamble around going through the motions now is painful. McCain really wanted to be president and seems to have felt that it was owed to him for his troubles. For him to see his nemesis, the Idiot Malicious Bush, in the office instead must be painful.

And don't get me started on Jeb Bush.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 19, 2007 10:55 AM

Liberals tend to think McCain principled because, for a while, he found it expedient to suck up to the media, and this involved him doing some things you approved of. But he was never doing them out of principle, he was just sucking up to you instead of his own party's base.

When he found out in 2000 that getting the nomination by crossover votes wasn't really going to work, he abandoned that strategy, and the result is that you think he's lost his way. Very amusing.

Principle is useful in a politician because it makes their behavior more predictable, but this is primarily because it allows you to make more reliable choices of whether to support OR oppose somebody. It's not a virtue independent of what the principles are.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | July 19, 2007 11:11 AM

He didn't fall as low or as vulgarly as Duke Cunningham

Keating Five?

McCain was always concerned with principle--and interest.

Posted by rea | July 19, 2007 11:29 AM

Eeugh, I feel the same way about Broder right now as you would feel about someone walking into a party wearing Hammer pants. Didn't somebody TELL him that Saint Straight Talk is out of style? Should *I* go tell him, or would that just increase his embarrassment? The poor schmuck, just LOOK at him over there doing the "2 Legit 2 Quit" thing with his hands...

Posted by Jake H. | July 19, 2007 11:32 AM

I know when I try to be principled, I start by sucking up to the guy that race-baited my daughter.

Posted by Reality Man | July 19, 2007 11:34 AM

"He is being punished now for saying what he believes about Iraq and immigration, among other things."

Iraq and immigration, eh? I'll concede that his stance on immigration was likely costly, but why do people insist on repeating this BS that McCain's Iraq position is to blame for the disaster his campaign has become??? McCain's campaign is failing because he's not appealing to Republican primary voters, most of whom are supporters of Bush and the current Iraq policy!. All of the GOP candidates are bending over to present themselves as pro Iraq war.

The truth is that McCain's dismal campaign was entirely predictable (and predicted). How many thousands of casual political observers looked at the possibility of a McCain run in 2008 and said, "yeah, but how will he ever get the nomination? The base hates him!" The Republican base hates McCain irrespective of his Iraq position, and it was obvious all along that McCain's gestures to the right (remember Liberty University?) wouldn't be enough to repair his reputation among the wingnut base. The adulation for McCain among people like Broder and Halperin blinded them to his campaign's glaring Achilles heel. Having staked so much of their infinite wisdom in foolishly anointing him the frontrunner, they're now reduced to this pathetic argument that he's too principled, too honest, too authentic for the dirty game of politics.

Posted by e-dawg | July 19, 2007 11:38 AM

"Eeugh, I feel the same way about Broder right now as you would feel about someone walking into a party wearing Hammer pants. Didn't somebody TELL him that Saint Straight Talk is out of style? Should *I* go tell him, or would that just increase his embarrassment? The poor schmuck, just LOOK at him over there doing the "2 Legit 2 Quit" thing with his hands..."

Maybe Broder is an ironic hipster and we're all too lame to realize how fresh and ironic with a "I don't give a fuck" attitude he truly is. He's so beyond trucker hats and bowling shirts.

Posted by Reality Man | July 19, 2007 12:01 PM

"The base hates him!" The Republican base hates McCain irrespective of his Iraq position, and it was obvious all along that McCain's gestures to the right (remember Liberty University?) wouldn't be enough to repair his reputation among the wingnut base. The adulation for McCain among people like Broder and Halperin blinded them to his campaign's glaring Achilles heel."

This needs to be stapled to Broder's head. The base hates someone for getting adulation from the "liberal media" because no true conservative would be loved by it. Only true conservatives like Trent Lott get hated by the "liberal media."

Posted by Reality Man | July 19, 2007 12:15 PM

If Broder's take is true, what, exactly, does it say about the GOP faithful that this principled fellow, once a front runner in the party, is now on his way to irrelevance?

Posted by gex | July 19, 2007 12:44 PM

It says that they don't appreciate somebody plotting to silence them in violation of the First amendment, while trying to execute a hostile takeover of their party with crossover votes?

And I repeat: Occasionally sucking up to the other side does not make one principled. It does occasionally sucker the other side into thinking that you've got principles, though.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | July 19, 2007 2:35 PM

"...there's no foreign policy problem he won't address by starting a war."

Let's give the man some credit. IIRC, St. John hasn't always supported war. He expressed deep reservations over the Bosnia intervention.

I wonder why? Could it be that his guiding principle involves supporting the big business Republican agenda du jour--and all else is negotiable?

Posted by danimal | July 19, 2007 6:45 PM

OK, I'll be the one to jump in and say that Broder has a point here, but it's not really the one he thinks it is.

Though he's wrong in so many ways, McCain is a little bit of a tragic hero (ugh, too strong -- say tragic protagonist). The reason is not that he is right about things but that he would at least have carried out many of Bush's bad policies with the honesty and competence that Bush pretended to.

Unfortunately, while McCain was great at shooting his mouth off about certain areas of disagreement, he had a critical weakness: he believed in loyalty above all else. That meant that when Bush's thugs kneecapped him in South Carolina in the 2000 election, he would come back to the fold and help empower the Boy King to f*** up the country when he was uniquely positioned to help block some of the damage.

Little did he know that at this juncture of history, loyalty was actually a vice....

Posted by fzz | July 19, 2007 10:33 PM

Indeed, McCain is not flip-flap-flip flopping with the speed and fury exhibited by Romney, had less contact with crooks than Guliani (who had one as his personal driver, take that, Keating Five episode), nor he used self-promotion to rack millions. Nor was he so mercenary as Thompson during the latter carrier as lobbyist.

McCain has a record of deviating from RNC script -- a_t o_c_c_a_s_i_o_n, and, as it was pointed out, folding his hand more often than not. Yes, he is the best what GOP can offer at this moment, with two corollaries:

(a) it places him out of the mainstream of this party, so the warm words of Broder sound like eulogy of McCain campaign

(b) GOP has a terribly short bench nowadays.

My money are on Thompson. Pretty wife, truly gorgeous ex-girlfriends, can so many nice women be wrong? His presidency would be a journalist dream, nothing like good gossip to revive the public interest in media.

Posted by piotr | July 20, 2007 12:27 PM