McCain's Record

One element of George W. Bush's rise to power that tends to be forgotten in retrospect is that Republicans were really looking in 2000 for someone who, though solidly conservative, didn't have a conservative voting record. Under Newt Gingrich, after all, the congressional GOP tried to implement conservatism and the voters didn't like it. But before John McCain was a maverick, he was an orthodox Republican Senator and he lived through the whole thing. If he becomes the GOP nominee, when the Democrats go through his voting record they'll find all the greatest hits from the 1996 re-election campaign -- stuff about $270 billion in Medicare cuts and tens of thousands of senior citizens forced into poverty.

That's ancient history now, so in some ways the impact will be blunted. But still, any long-serving senator faces some real risks in having random elements of his voting record dragged back out during the campaign, and as best anyone can tell rabid opposition to government services actually is something McCain believes in. How will that play out in the end? It's hard to say. But the essence of McCain's strength in the polls right now is that for years he's been attacked by the right as insufficiently loyal and sporadically praised by Democrats as a valued collaborator. If he wins, that changes, and we start hearing about a whole other side of McCain's record.

Comments

McCain's head looks like a peanut.

Posted by Petey | January 9, 2008 12:23 PM

If he wins, that changes, and we start hearing about a whole other side of McCain's record.

the media adores McCain. we won't hear anything negative about him at all.

Posted by cleek | January 9, 2008 12:24 PM

Seems about the only way the Dems can screw up an otherwise sure thing is a Hillary - McCain contest.

Posted by kafka | January 9, 2008 12:34 PM

It's not "random bits" that are the issue. His record as a whole is a lot more conservative than most Americans are led to believe. I remember a few years back taking one of those online issues tests where you answer questions and it shows you which candidate is closest to your position. I was suprised at how far to the right McCain is - waay farther than he is made out to be. The Dem nominee should make a big deal of this, with no random cherry picking of Senate votes required.
-ji

Posted by John I | January 9, 2008 12:38 PM

The only thing McCain stands for is war. He's been bragging about his support for the "surge" lately. Yesterday a Pentagon official released an official statement admitting that failure in Iraq is "likelier than not".

We can wait for the MSM to point that out, like Kerry did with the Swiftboaters, or we can start saying it. McCain is dangerous, not in partisan terms, but in terms of national security. An we don't need to go twelve years back in time to make the case.

Posted by Jim | January 9, 2008 12:41 PM

IIRC, even McCain's overall legislative productivity is poor, in the sense that the number of bills that he has sponsored/co-sponsored was roughly the same as that of John Kerry in 2004, which, during that year's election, was held up as a poor record indeed.

I don't know if that will matter to Republican voters.
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | January 9, 2008 12:41 PM

His soundbite last night was about "restoring" trust and integrity in the government. Why doesn't the media ask just who is controlling the government that needs such restoration ?

Posted by H-Bob | January 9, 2008 12:49 PM

Screw voting records. The thing that matters with voters in the end is "authenticity." Which candidate do you think wins one that, Clinton or McCain?

Republicans tried to tar Kerry with his voting record in 2004, but what lost it for him, at the end of the day, was his personality - i.e. the way he rebutted the charges against him.

Posted by Bill | January 9, 2008 12:50 PM

The thing about McCain that always drives me to vocal outbursts when he comes up is that the media gives him credit for stands he has not only failed to uphold, but that he has deliberately undermined.

The most disgusting of these was the torture bill in 2006. McCain - a torture victim himself during his long time as a POW - emerged as the leader and lynchpin of the opposition to the torture bill, and it looked like the opposition would hold. Once McCain had extracted maximum praise in the media for his allegedly principled stand, he used his indispensible role as the recognized figure opposed to the bill to pass a cosmetically altered bill that, despite the hypoe, gave Cheney et al. everything they wanted. And, of course, the media (and Andrew Sullivan) continued to give McCain credit as an opponent of torture.

Posted by Warren Terra | January 9, 2008 1:14 PM

McCain has a lot of ancient history. Which befits a truly ancient guy.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | January 9, 2008 1:21 PM

Aside from the point about his voting record, it's worth remembering the similar point that McCain has never been associated anywhere nearly as closely with the Republican Party itself as he will be in the general election if he wins the nomination. The press went nuts over him in 2000 and hasn't dialed down their enthusiasm for him since then, but that's always been in tandem with his maverick/outsider image, running against the party establishment (as in 2000, when Bush was the overwhelming choice of the party establishment in the primaries), etc.

But once McCain wins the nomination, he becomes "the establishment" of the party. Of course, I'm not saying that simple fact would erase his maverick/indy/etc. credibility; obviously that would be a stupid thing to predict. But you've got to figure it's something that wouldn't be working in his favor, considering how awful their party brand is in this election.

Posted by Haggai | January 9, 2008 1:57 PM

There's a website called Voteview.com that uses a mathematical model to rank members of Congress--in the 109th Senate, McCain came in second in terms of voting with the Republicans and against the Democrats. In other words, there were roughly four dozen Republican senators who were more maverick than him.

Posted by Jim Naureckas | January 9, 2008 3:25 PM

But the great thing about it is that we might finally have the argument about what the proper levels of taxation and spending should be. Right now, both parties have done their utmost to keep the two seperate in voters' minds. So voters support tax cuts and they support more spending.

McCain opposed the Bush tax cuts because he felt they were irresponsible without spending cuts. McCain will level with Americans and force a choice that neither party is eager for Americans to make. Once Americans really understand just how much they are paying in various ways, you'll be surprised at how much understanding there will be for spending cuts.

But if Matt is right and Americans want more spending and are willing to pay more taxes for it, that's fine too. The most important thing is for us to finally have this debate in all its facets, and McCain as a the GOP nominee for the first time in a long time makes that possible.

Posted by Adam Herman | January 9, 2008 4:25 PM

Any Republican who gets the nomination will run on national security and terrorism - that's a foregone conclusion. They haven't got anything else to talk about (well, maybe immigration.)

And anyone who does that will beat Hillary Clinton or Obama on precisely that issue - no matter how bad the Iraq war is.

Because politics is alpha male territory. It's about scaring the voters into giving up their rights and their money to the PTB. It's that simple.

And the Dems can't do that well - although Bill wasn't too bad at it, he was helped by the incredibly weak appearance Bush Senior presented a year after the 1991 war. While some of that may play out given the incompetent moron in the White House today, that doesn't mean the US electorate won't "double down" on a tough-talking Republican like McCain - or even a raving loony like Giuliani.

So what we'll see is the Republican nominee screaming "Islamofascism" while the Dem nominee tries to match him, and when the case shifts to the economy, the Republican will scream "immigration" while the Dem tries to quibble.

Bottom line: Dems lose - or win by such a narrow margin, they end up having still no control of the Congress enough to get anything done for the next four years.

Meanwhile, whoever wins will start a war with either Iran, Pakistan or both.

Doesn't look good, sweetheart.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 9, 2008 10:35 PM

McCain is being set up by the media as the trussed turkey for Obama or Hillary to carve up.

If McCain has become a lifetime politician on the strength of his continued milking of his POW Victimhood his next 35 years of Navy scandal, 25 years as a DC insider are open to scrutiny(his 561 fellow returning POWa, not to mention all but a few of the maimed never claimed an entitlement of office). His Navy years after Vietnam were not standout ones. He got embroiled in a few scandals on adultery and raised questions regarding his temperment, erratic behavior that led to his being passed over for Admiral and retired from military service. In his next act, he had 25 years of relatively undistinguished service in Congress marred by scandal and a reputation for treachery.

When old warhorse and Old Order leader Bob Dole was presented as a easy mark for Clinton, the election was basically over at the Republican Convention.

And Bob Dole was loved by every Republican as a trustworthy person of high character, modesty, intelligence, and his own patented "dark" good humor. And liked and respected by Democrats as trustworthy an able leader.

McCain is the person in Congress most like Bush. A "my way or the highway" arrogant fighter jock who appears to usually decide what he knows best by gut instinct while shunning advice, who stubbornly sticks to his decisions and governs differently than on what he runs on.

It might be a good thing for Republicans to reach an understanding that there is no way they can be elected in 2008 and offer up either the theocrat Pastor Huckleberry as a sop to the Thumpers as the candidate of hopeless unelectable purity or as a way to really stick it to McCain for betraying them so many times. Because with the two of them it will be a shellacking. Probably so for Mr. 9/11 as well.

Or go with Fred Tompson or Mitt Romney. They might still lose, but both have strong visions for reform and a new course for America and the Republican Party. If you were somehow able to combine the two and take their best traits, you would have a great candidate.

Posted by chris ford | January 10, 2008 1:25 AM