McCain haters are sure to like this
glowing review of John McCain from Washington Post's David Ignatious, who surely fled to his keyboard in a swoon of inspiration after making eye contact with his manly muse.
It's titled "A Man Who Won't Sell His Soul".
Between rapid heartbeats, Ignatious inscribes the following ode:
McCain is a walking embodiment of the Catch-22 of presidential politics. To get the nomination, a candidate must appeal to his party's activist wing. But even as he buffs his credentials with the base, the candidate inevitably tarnishes his image with the center. A successful campaign almost requires some fibbing -- the candidate is either less extreme than he's telling his party's base, or more extreme than he's telling the general public. The trick is not to get caught -- not to be too obvious in the tactical compromises that are necessary in the marathon race of a presidential campaign.
Is that the trick, David? To almost lie about what you represent? Ignatious is a coward here, and what he can't say outright: "You have to pander in politics, and misrepresent yourself to win."
What a sad, empty, yet widely held belief among the DC circuit; that a politician shouldn't just be mum about certain controversial views, he should misrepresent them to the public to realize his ambition. A certain "uniter not a divider" promise comes to mind.
But Ignatious' crush doesn't end there..
Part of McCain's appeal is that he seems to straddle such partisan political calculations. He's the victim of torture who opposes torture, the man caught in the "Keating Five" ethics scandal who insists on reform, the critic of Iraq policy who insists that America must win the war, the conservative who is beloved by moderates. A McCain candidacy, if he makes the formal decision next year to run, will be rooted in his image as a man of principle. But it will also be something of a balancing act -- one that the candidate himself is likely to find uncomfortable.
Balancing like a clown on a tight-rope above an angry public.
He opposed torture? Well, he crafted a bill that was sorta anti-torture to polish his tortured biography. And the President wrote himself a little exception on that bill. What did it say?
"The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in Chief," Bush wrote, adding that this approach "will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President . . . of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks."
As far as I know we're still torturing. Is McCain still opposing? It would have been far better for McCain to do NOTHING than provide false closure to this issue of extreme ethical consequence.
Here's the real tight-rope McCain walks: a balancing act in support of President Bush's most aggressive policies. And the sooner the charade is over, the less Ignatious panting we have to endure.