On McCain's Contradictions
Robert Gordon is one of my favorite center-left thinkers, so it should come as no surprise that he landed many blows in TNR essay he’s co-authored with James Kvaal on McCain’s contradictions. I support John McCain, and I recognize that he’s facing a very tough political environment. That’s why he is often forced to embrace positions that are very much in tension with each other. My suspicion is that if McCain were running far ahead of the competition, if he faced a less polarized political environment, you’d see him embrace a different, more coherent set of policies. But campaign politics is about targets of opportunity, and for Republicans at this very fraught moment it is about papering over major fractures within the base. McCain’s contradictions are, as Gordon and Kvaal fully understand, rooted in these fractures — keeping the Bush bundlers on side while also reaching out to working class voters, etc. I don’t envy them their task.
To advance something like our agenda in GNP, you first have to do years of spadework. Ross and I simply aimed to get the ball rolling, to provoke and to advance the debate. But of course we can’t stand in for an entire policymaking apparatus. Part of our goal was to change the terms of the debate, to rethink what the welfare state is and what it can realistically achieve. In 2008, however, we have a set of political categories that are very deeply ingrained. The public understands taxes, not tax subsidies. The payroll tax is considered untouchable. Voters are underestimating the scale of the problems facing Medicare and they are overestimating the negative impact of trade. New narratives take time to take, and most campaigns are (understandably) hostile to experimentation. The Obama campaign, interestingly, is not, though it helps that they are flush with cash and face a very different, far more favorable media environment. I hold Obama in high esteem as a candidate. And yet the thinness of his resume is really something. I don’t think that disqualifies him, but it is damn impressive that he’s made it this far, and will likely go farther still.
“My suspicion is that if McCain were running far ahead of the competition, if he faced a less polarized political environment, you’d see him embrace a different, more coherent set of policies.”
Quite possibly. The problem, of course, is that the set of policies (from rogue state rollback to taxation to the role of religion in public life) may not cohere into anything you’d particularly favor. In that sense, Barack Obama is the devil you know; John McCain is the devil you don’t.
Another thing worth considering is why no coherent political philosophy (that I can detect) emerged from McCain’s years in the senate. He held a very safe seat and, until 2000, was not particularly hamstrung by any species of electoral politics. Yet McCain’s record is not at all like his predecessor Barry Goldwater’s. He (creditably) enjoys his bouts of independence from the party and relishes an opportunity for bipartisanship. Nevertheless, McCain seems (less creditably) to have practiced independence and bipartisanship not as a means to a principled end, but as virtues in themselves without reference to the larger principles at stake. To McCain, I suspect, a bipartisan effort to block Bush’s tax cuts is as good and worthwhile as a bipartisan effort to make them permanent; it’s the bipartisanship that really counts.
— southpaw · Jul 9, 08:16 PM · #
My question remains why you have criticized Obama (in the Current, for example) for changing his stances on issues due to political pressure, but hold no such criticism for McCain— when, for example, he votes against his own immigration bill when it becomes politically expedient for him to do so. Why is the former political opportunism and the latter some sort of principled tension of ideals? I don’t get it.
face a very different, far more favorable media environment.
Do you mean from previous campaigns? Possibly. Do you mean far more favorable than the treatment of John McCain by the media? Now that’s just flat wrong. The media’s crush on McCain is more powerful than the regard they’ve held for any sitting politician in my adult life, and by a large margin.
— Freddie · Jul 9, 09:16 PM · #
Freddie:
I’m confused. I wrote something about Obama’s campaign finance “flip-flop” in which I criticized the campaign finance system and praised his decision.
— Reihan · Jul 9, 09:36 PM · #
So are you saying that McCain will say anything to get elected and that since he’s behind, that’s ok? Not sure that’s someone I want to see in higher office
— Steven Donegal · Jul 9, 09:48 PM · #
I’m confused. I wrote something about Obama’s campaign finance “flip-flop” in which I criticized the campaign finance system and praised his decision.
Hang on I’ll find a link.
OK can’t find it I’m an idiot carry on carry on.
— Freddie · Jul 9, 09:56 PM · #
Here’s the basic problem for McCain: We would all be better off if he had won in 2000/04. We would have been spared 8yrs of the Bush/Cheney Mendacity; Cheney would have had his 6th heart attack; GWBush would be President of the Montral Expos; Karl Rove would be running a Dunkin’ Donuts in Crawford; McCain would have gracefully retired; Democrats take their turn at President again. But now the Republicans are trying to correct their faux pas of backing Bush and giving McCain a do-over. Sorry; it won’t work.
— theod · Jul 10, 03:35 PM · #