Groggy over morning coffee, I’m reflecting on one of the most frequently heard reactions to John McCain’s speech: It had no over-arching theme.
The pundits says this as if the speech’s lack of coherence was a simple act of omission, an ingredient left out of the recipe, as if a baker left the sprinkles off of a cup cake.
The truth is, the speech had contradictory, self-canceling themes that constitute a kind of political fraud.
"Nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself," John McCain said at the climax of the speech.
Let’s imagine the platform of a leader who actually believed in such a creed. It might include support for national service programs like the Peace Corps or Teach for America or like the "tuition-for-service" program articulated last week by Obama. It might include a challenge to voters to sacrifice to help the nation confront the energy crisis, the debt crisis or the entitlement crisis. It might include an activist foreign policy doctrine that called on America to build international institutions, or to intervene to stop genocide or human rights violations, or (if he wanted to sound like George Bush) to spread Democracy across the world.
But what political platform did McCain announce? Lower taxes. Larger markets. Choice in education and health care. A government that "works to make sure you have more choices to make for yourself." A foreign policy concerned primarily if not exclusively with defeating "threats."
This is definitely a cause: it’s the cause of the same old movement conservatism that’s been trying to wreck our country for 40 years. Which makes a mockery of McCain’s claim to be someone who "marches to the beat of his own drum." Which in turn makes a mockery of his claim that "I fight for you."
If you really think about it, McCain seems to be saying: the "cause greater than yourself" that calls us all to service is "you."
Of course, McCain hopes that we don’t think about it. We might be reminded of Obama’s warning that in the Republican "ownership society" we are all on our own.
Built on fraudulent premises, McCain’s speech is not like a cup cake without sprinkles or a pie without ice cream.
It’s like sugar coating on a poison pill.