Tag Archives: John McCain

(POLITICAL) CHARITY CASE

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Much like a lot of people who opine for reasonably-sized audiences, Cass Sunstein deems Barack Obama and John McCain both more admirable than most US Senators. His reason:

Politicians who show respect–Senator McCain is a good example–tend not to attack the competence, the motivations, or the defining commitments of those who disagree with him. Politicians who show charity as well as respect–Senator Obama is a rare example–tend to put opposing arguments in the best possible form, to praise the motivations of those who offer such arguments, and to seek proposals that specifically accept the defining commitments of all sides.

In other words, McCain shows respect by criticizing just the reasoning and not the character of his opponents; Obama shows the greater virtue of charity by affirming the character of his opponents and stating their arguments in the most generous terms possible.

They do?

Of course, it would be tacky to just scrounge up a single example of McCain vituperatively attacking the character of an opponent. So let’s restrict ourselves to examples of McCain vituperatively attacking the character of the most charitable Senator in America (TM). Maybe this counts:

I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter… I’m embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in political to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble.

As for Obama, he’s certainly outspoken on the virtues of granting those you disagree with the benefit of the doubt. After all, that was the principle behind his criticism of liberal advocacy groups that criticized Pat Leahy:

The knee-jerk unbending and what I consider to be unfair attacks on Senator Leahy’s motives were unjustified…the same unyielding, unbending, dogmatic approach to judicial confirmation has in large part been responsible for the kind of poisonous atmosphere that exists in this Chamber…These groups on the right and left should not resort to the sort of broad-brush dogmatic attacks that have hampered the process…

Watch as Barack Obama rises to defend the character of someone he disagrees with and – all the better to strike a blow for political charity – calls out the critics for being so “knee-jerk…unyielding, unbending…broad-brush dogmatic…” In his zeal to defend Pat Leahy’s honor, you’d almost think he was criticizing the character of those he disagrees with about the appropriate way to criticize Pat Leahy – or at least failing to present their argument in “the best possible form.”

What was the argument that drove Barack Obama into a fit of political charity? He’s too much of a gentleman to name names, but he most quoted criticism of Leahy from the left for voting for Roberts came from People for the American Way:

His decision was inexplicable, and deeply disappointing. When John Roberts becomes Chief Justice and votes to erode or overturn longstanding Supreme Court precedents protecting fundamental civil rights, women’s rights, privacy, religious liberty, reproductive rights and environmental safeguards, Senator Leahy’s support for Roberts will make him complicit in those rulings, and in the retreat from our constitutional rights and liberties.”

I suppose it’s unyielding in that PFAW hasn’t changed its position on Pat Leahy voting for John Roberts. Knee-jerk? Well, maybe they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they hadn’t put together those many-hundred-page reports on the guy. The word “complicit” earned condemnation as “vicious” from the Washington Post. But all it means is he shares some measure of responsibility for the actions on the bench of a man he voted to put there.

The more interesting question, perhaps, rather than how well Cass Sunstein’s chosen paragons live up to his chosen virtues of political respect and charity is whether these virtues – however commendable in private life – are really virtuous in public life at all. Should people who dislike social darwinism and dislike laissez-faire conservatism call foul when Barack Obama suggests the former is motivating the latter?

WASHINGTON ORIGINAL?

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This article strikes me as a good example of why Washington reporters get a bad rap. The big story, apparently, is that Marshall Wittman has worked for a lot of different Washington power brokers who don’t get along with each other or often agree (although Caesar and Linda Chavez are somewhat farther off from each other than Ralph and Bruce Reed). Leibovich isn’t writing a story about the course of Wittman’s evolving political ideology – instead, we learn that Wittman likes interesting people and snappy quotes. He’s into McCain! He’s into Lieberman! (Not that getting from one’s talking points to the other’s is a colossal leap) Makes it easy to forget that people’s lives are actually affected by politics.

SAM BROWNBACK, CALL YOUR PUBLICIST

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I’m not much one for “Great Man” theories of our political history – that is, I think most of the writing on twists and turns in American political history overstates the importance of the sensibilities and psychology of individual politicians and understates social movements, cultural trends, demographic shifts, and so forth – but I’ll readily acknowledge that when it comes to, say, the Republican presidential primary for 2008, there are only so many apparent contenders. And an act of hubris or poor strategery that pulls one out of contention can seriously shift the playing field for everybody else.

That’s why Democrats may come to reconsider their glee over George Allen’s “macaca” muck-up of two months ago if it turns out to have indeed taken Allen out of serious contention for the GOP presidential nomination. Because not long ago, George Allen was well-placed to bear the mantle of “Un-McCain,” a charismatic candidate with the right combination of sterling conservative credentials and cultural compatability (however affected) to excite folks from the GOP base, particularly Christian conservatives, either nonplussed or turned off by a McCain candidacy. The evidence of racial animus on his part could have been just enough to let him take the primary but not the general election.

Now, not so much.

And just as Hillary Clinton’s best chance of taking her party’s nomination is the scenario in which a single charismatic, consenus “Un-Hillary” never quite materializes, for the GOP nod to go to McCain, whose otherwise right-wing record is marred by opposition to global warming, hard money, and torture, and by some carefully chosen symbolic snubs to the base, is the absence of a single viable “Un-McCain.”

Maybe what’s most striking in all this is the lack of a strong McCain alternative to gather in all the GOP activists under one placard. First it was supposed to be Bill Frist. Then he got outplayed by the “Gang of 14” over judicial nominations. And his impressive conversion on the road to Iowa into a religious right zealot was undercut by his betrayal on stem cells.

Rick Santorum, one of the most telegenic elected Republicans out there, from one of the states the party is trying hardest to bring back into its column, is now on track to get kicked out of office by Keystone State voters.

Mike Huckabee has so far failed to make a name for himself for more than losing weight – except with the Club for Growth and the economic right-wingers in its orbit, who hate his guts more than most non-McCain GOPers’.

Mitt Romney, though he pulled off an impressive ground game in the SRLC straw poll six months ago, is still going to have a hard time as the Mormon Governor of Massachusetts exciting the base enough to avert a marriage of convenience to McCain.

Newt Gingrich, like Gary Hart in the lead-up to ’04, seems to have underestimated the staying power of his scandals and overestimated the yearning of the American people for a wonk.

Rudy Giuliani believes in the right to choose.

So it’s not clear who is left to stop the steady flow of strategists, fund-raisers, and activists to John McCain, who is by far the most popular advocate of right-wing politics in the United States. After Macacagate, McCain has at least a passable shot at benefiting from the kind of dynamic that played a key role in elevating Bill Clinton in ’92: the absence of a primary candidate beloved by the party’s base.

And while McCain is beatable, he has the benefit of years of praise not only from starstruck journalists but from short-sighted Democrats who’ve boosted his claims to speak for the center of America.

Meanwhile, you’ve gotta wonder what’s going through the head of Sam Brownback, as staunch a social conservative as you’ll find in the Senate, with no bruising re-election fight in sight, no awkward position in the Republican leadership, and no scandal-ridden press clippings to buck.

THE DEMOCRATS’ MISSING LINC

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With all the ink spilled over the Chafee-Laffey primary last Tuesday, and the inevitable comparisons made to the Lieberman-Lamont primary last month, you could almost lose track of one of the critical ways in which the two primaries are not parallel at all:

Joe Lieberman is a not-so liberal Democrat from a strongly-Democratic state.

Lincoln Chafee is a not-so conservative Republican from a strongly-Democratic state.

That’s the difference: Lieberman evoked so much opposition within his own state because the median Connecticut voter is a Democrat well to the left of him. Chafee would have lost his primary had only Republicans participated, but he drew many of the GOP votes he did based on the recognition that the median Rhode Island voter was a Democrat to the left, not the right, of Chafee.

Joe Lieberman isn’t the Democratic equivalent of Lincoln Chafee. Ben Nelson is more like it. As for the Republican equivalent of Joe Lieberman, there just isn’t one. No state as red as Connecticut is blue has a Republican senator as close to the center as Joe Lieberman is. John McCain isn’t even close.

BEYOND BUSH AND TANCREDO

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Catching up on the immigration debate that broke out amongst some of my co-bloggers over at Campus Progress while I was out of the country, I think it exemplifies an unfortunate trend in the contemporary debate: conflating the questions of how immigration should be regulated and of what rights immigrants should have in this country. Every issue has some pundit out there convinced that there are not two sides but three or seven or nineteen, but the immigration question is actually one where there are three camps – counting not the number of potentially coherent ideologies out there but the number of discrete large-scale positions people are visibly lobbying for – which can’t be placed along along a single spectrum without losing a good deal of meaning.

The position which has gotten the most colorful press coverage recently is the one advocated by Tom Tancredo (R-CA) and the Minutemen vigilantes who’ve taken it on themselves the patrol the border and chase down people who look to them like immigrants. Tancredo wants to cut immigration to this country (drastically) by building a wall and wants to curtail the rights of immigrants here (drastically) by denying their children birthright citizenship. It’s a position which resonates with a significant swath of the Republican base, as well as some traditionally Democratic-voting folks. It’s the position of the National Review. Shamefully, it used to be (roughly) the official position of the AFL-CIO (arguably that position would have fit better in a fourth quadrant – fewer immigrants but more rights for them – which I’ll leave out here because it lacks many advocates).

The position which has unfortunately been the primary alternative portrayed in the media is the cluster of policy proposals represented by George W. Bush: more legal immigration but fewer rights for immigrants. That would be the consequence of the crypto-bracero program he offered two years ago, under which undocumented immigrants are invited to come out of the shadows and into the trust of their employers, who can sponsor them for as long as they see fit but are given no reason not to have them deported if they do something the boss doesn’t like. This is the position of the Wall Street Journal and the Cato foundation and the business elites they’re looking out for.

There’s a progressive position in this debate, but it isn’t either of these. It’s the position for which immigrants, advocates, and allies rode from around the country to Flushing Meadows Park for two years ago: open our country to more legal immigration and protect the rights of everyone who lives here. It’s the position of the national labor movement, the NAACP, and the National Council of La Raza, and it’s the one reflected in the principles of the New American Opportunity Campaign: offer a path to citizenship, reunite families, protect civil liberties, and safeguard the right to organize and bargain collectively for everyone who lives and works here. That’s the goal towards which the legislation offered by senators Kennedy and McCain is a crucial step.

Conservatives reap the benefits from any debate which pits low-income workers against each other based on race or gender or citizenship – even when such a debate makes cracks in their electoral coalition in the short term. Building a progressive movement in this country depends on bringing together working people across such divisions to confront shared challenges and opponents with common cause. It’s a task which ostensibly progressive organizations too often have failed – to their own detriment. A two-tiered workforce is bad for workers, and it’s bad for America. But the right answer to that challenge, on the immigration question as on the race question and the gender question, is to welcome new workers and ensure that they have the same rights as old ones, so that they can organize and bargain together to raise their standard of living. Pushing marginalized workers out of the workforce was the wrong position then, and it’s the wrong one now. It consigns more men and women to die crossing the border, and it endangers our security by perpetuating a system in which millions of people needlessly live outside of the law. And it denies the historical promise and dynamism of this country.

ABRA-MATHON

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On today’s YDN opinion page, Eli Luberoff writes a letter responding to the statement in my Tuesday column that

While Abramoff made strategic donations to members of both parties, it was Republicans with whom he collaborated to break the law and the trust of the American people.

Eli agrees with the second part of the sentence, but he disputes the first part – that Abramoff made “strategic donations to members of both parties.” In retrospect, my wording was needlessly imprecise. Literally, Abramoff did make “strategic donations to member of both parties,” in that he made in-kind donations to Democrats as well as Republicans. More important, though, are the donations Abramoff directed through his clients to Democrats as well as Republicans, which were more substantial. Better wording here would have more clearly encompassed those contributions, which while heavily skewed towards Republicans, didn’t go exclusively to them. But as my column made clear, I agree with Eli that this is a Republican scandal through and through.

My Tuesday piece also comes up in Roger Low’s column today. Roger notes that Democrats do corrupt things sometimes too, which I think we can all acknowledge without losing sight of the underlying ideological edge of the Abramoff scandal: this is a story about concentrated economic power trumping popular majorities in setting policy and distributing resources. Roger rightfully calls the Democrats on their failure to champion a more aggressive reform agenda, and then veers off into an encomium to John McCain, who – besides being a staunch conservative except for his opposition to torture, global warming, and soft money (talk about defining deviancy down) – hasn’t championed any of those reforms either.

THE WEEK IN FEARING FEAR ITSELF

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Big week on the not-trampling-over-all-of-our-values-and-freedoms-in-the-same-of-security front. I’m skeptical of how much difference the McCain ammendment committing us not to torture will make on the ground, but it’s a good sign that even after sending Dick Cheney out of his undisclosed location and onto Capitol Hill, Bush wasn’t able to keep Congressional Republicans on the reservation (the anti-anti-torture reservation, that is). The ultimate result, in which Bush met McCain much further than halfway from his original “waterboarding is freedom” position, shows him to be a weakened President and puts this nation back on record against willfully inflicting abusive pain on prisoners. The urgency of the issue, and the limitations of legal language like McCain’s in addressing it, are reinforced in Human Rights Watch’s announcement today on pervasive torture in secret US-operated foreign prisons:

Eight detainees now held at Guantánamo described to their attorneys how they were held at a facility near Kabul at various times between 2002 and 2004. The detainees, who called the facility the “dark prison” or “prison of darkness,” said they were chained to walls, deprived of food and drinking water, and kept in total darkness with loud rap, heavy metal music, or other sounds blared for weeks at a time. The detainees offer consistent accounts about the facility, saying that U.S. and Afghan guards were not in uniform and that U.S. interrogators did not wear military attire, which suggests that the prison may have been operated by personnel from the Central Intelligence Agency…Some detainees said they were shackled in a manner that made it impossible to lie down or sleep, with restraints that caused their hands and wrists to swell up or bruise. The detainees said they were deprived of food for days at a time, and given only filthy water to drink. The detainees also said that they were held incommunicado and never visited by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross or other independent officials.

This “dark prison” report follows Friday’s New York Times revelation that President Bush has been authorizing the NSA to spy on Americans without even going through the secret courts designed for the purpose, which should shake any confidence one might have that better laws will fully set this administration straight. Bush apparently believes that he is authorized to personally designate Americans as surveillance targets based on the congressional resolution authorizing him to go to war in Afghanistan.

That Congress showed much less deference on Friday, when Bill Frist could only muster 52 votes for cloture on the Conference Committee’s version of the PATRIOT Act reauthorization, which took out all the civil liberties protections that Russ Feingold and others managed to get into the version passed unanimously by the Senate. In a striking victory for sensible privacy protections over fear-mongering, Feingold, Leahy, and company have kept the Senate from approving the Conference Committee Draft. It’s also a huge victory for Feingold personally, who has gone from being the only Senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act to leading a charge to continue debate on the bill which saw more Republicans cross over to oppose cloture than Democrats crossing over to support it. Looks like the Democratic leadership, rather than marginalizing him, is now trying to pull him into the party establishment, handing him a seat on the Intelligence Commission.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, made the news for her own sorry contribution to the discourse on patriotism and freedom: a proposal to ban flag-burning. Hers is ostensibly a compromise position in that it’s a bill rather than a constitutional amendment, and it only applies on public property or when someone is intimidated. But legitimating speech restrictions based on how uncomfortable the speech makes other people feel makes a mockery of free speech. She should know better.

WE KNOW TOM DELAY

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Yesterday’s Houston Chronicle names my family’s home district, Pennsylvania’s sixth, as the nation’s top swing district for the 2006 elections. The article previews the strategy rightly being pushed by Howard Dean and others (with too little support from Congressional Democrats) to nationalize these elections as referenda on the corrupt record of Tom DeLay and his enablers, like our Congressman Jim Gerlach. Gerlach’s response?

Gerlach said the Texan’s ethics controversies would have little impact in the district, saying that most voters here “don’t know who Tom DeLay is.”

Unfortunately for Gerlach, a great and growing number of us know all too well who Tom DeLay is. We know Tom DeLay violated House Ethics Rules by taking a vacation in Moscow paid for by a front group for Russian government lobbyists and claiming it was funded by a non-profit in DC. We know Tom DeLay broke the same law on a trip to South Korea paid for by lobbyists for that government. We know Tom DeLay’s PAC is under investigation for illegally funneling cash from big business. And we know that each of Tom DeLay’s scandals stems from his close working relationship with embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose theft of millions of dollars from Native American tribes John McCain called “simply and sadly a tale of betrayal.” We also know that Jim Gerlach, who claims to be an independent representative of the people of Pennsylvania’s sixth district, voted repeatedly to weaken ethics rules on Tom DeLay’s behalf and donated $2,000 to his Legal Defense Fund. Jim Gerlach sides with Tom DeLay on nine out of ten votes, supporting destructive and irresponsible fiscal, social, and foreign policy that hurts our district. Jim Gerlach’s problem is that his constituents know Tom DeLay, we know Jim Gerlach, and we know that we can do better.

From Matt

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Among the immediately tangible benefits of the failure of Bush’s domestic plan for his second term is the growing influence of a centrist bloc in Congress. Most of these people are guys I’d love to knock out of office in 2006, but I’d rather have rational opposition like McCain than our rabid friend Mr. Frist, even if it hurts our chances. It’s a purely visceral reaction: Frist, Delay, they just terrify me. I don’t want them managing my town’s McDonald’s, let alone our government – they’d spit in the fries.

The clearest recent example of the centrist bloc is the much-reported deal on judicial nominees. I have to say that this feels like a loss to me – not as disastrous as the elimination of filibuster rules, certainly, but the precedent of allowing groups to use political leverage to force up-or-down votes has been set.

That said, the <a href=”news’>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7964239/”>news regarding stem cell research is nothing short of astonishing:

Ignoring President Bush’s veto threat, the House voted Tuesday to lift limits on embryonic stem cell research, a measure supporters said could accelerate cures for diseases but opponents viewed as akin to abortion.

I’m trying to be hopeful. It’s a mixed victory, but in a political climate like this people like Santorum are dead in the water.

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So it turns out to be a compromise on judges after all. Hard to know just how to read it, given that with freedom for Democrats to filibuster under “extraordinary circumstances” and for Republicans to nuke if “continuing commitments made in this agreement” are abridged, all it resolves for good is that Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryer, and Priscilla Owen will soon be Circuit Court Judges and William Myers and Henry Saad won’t be. But given that the Democrats’ position on this has, for better or worse (you can guess where I come down on that one), all along been one of extreme willingness to compromise (“We gave you the judge who thinks men should dominate their wives, but do you really need the one who thinks God has veto power over the constitution”), almost any compromise would have been a political victory for the Democrats. Not as big a victory as the one I suspect we could have had tomorrow (in part because I trust John McCain’s political instincts more than, say, Joe Lieberman’s). As compromises go, the word a few days ago was that the major sticking point was GOP resistance to language like this:

We believe that, under Article II, Section 2, of the United States Constitution, the word “Advice” speaks to consultation between the Senate and the President with regard to the use of the President’s power to make nominations. We encourage the Executive branch of government to consult with members of the Senate, both Democratic and Republican, prior to submitting a judicial nomination to the Senate for consideration.

So the Dems at least got something out of the negotiations. Today we saw a few Republican Senators buck the Senate leadership and the Senate buck the unilateral impulses of the White House. That counts for something. And the reason it happened is because public opinion has turned rather sharply against the Bush team and their exercise of their ostensible mandate. That’s a trend which should have implications which last much longer than this agreement. But only if the Democrats capitalize on it with a robust and aggressive vision. I’d say cutting this deal was a poor move, but those saying that the party had been taking a firm and principled stand which it undercut tonight forget that when it comes to steadfast refusal to let through extremist unqualified judges, the ship had sailed on that one – and driving it were Randians, theocrats, and Randian-theocrats who have now safely arrived in a court near you. The Democrats’ repreated invocation of outrageous nominees they’d let though, rather than making them seem eminently reasonable, just made them look sort of silly.

Speaking of the future, anyone who still thinks John McCain – in whose office the compromise was apparently signed – isn’t running for President has another think coming. Same goes for anyone arguing that he does whatever’s right regardless of politics. As for Bill Frist, I’m sure he’ll do well on the lecture circuit. Or at least, he has a better shot at it than at a serious run for the GOP nomination. Good news for him: washed up right-wing speakers, unlike sitting Senators, aren’t expected to go into inner cities where they have to worry about being stabbed to death by children of color with pencils. Now, back to spanish conjugations for me.

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The reasonably possible ’08 match-up that Democrats have the best shot at winning:
Russ Feingold vs. Rick Santorum

The reasonably possible ’08 match-up that Democrats have the worst shot at winning:
Hillary Clinton vs. John McCain

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A few thoughts on the McCain and Giuliani speeches last night:

How exactly has John McCain determined that Al Qaeda was weakened by the War in Iraq? Does he know something the rest of us don’t? Because there’s plenty to indicate that Al Qaeda’s been strengthened by the diversion of resources to Iraq and the gestures towards religious crusade. If McCain can prove the contrary, that would seem to be the kind of information we’d be hearing about at the Convention. I mean, it’s not as if the Bush Administration has been shy about leaking classified information for electoral gain.

It’s always been impressive how Republicans manage to contend on the one hand that they represent decent, faithful, virgin America and defend it against the coarse and the obscene, and on the other hand that they represent common, hard-working, tough America against the lilly-livered elite (Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas? has an engaging the discussion of the need for the myth of the liberal elite as an explanatory tool for conservatives to exempt the smut they condemn from the explanations of laissez-faire capitalism they enshrine). But it takes truly stunning rhetorical gymnastics to elide both charges in a few sentences, as Giuliani does in celebrating Bush both for being comfortable with the vulgar language of the common man construction workers and for eschewing the vulgarity of the Democrats.

So Giuliani is opposed to undemocratically elected governments which use external enemies to try to distract their citizens instead of improving healthcare. Who knew?