This is an intellectual exercise, not an endorsement.
If it were an endorsement that also met the “full honesty”
standards of good journalism, it would need to be nuanced enough
to explain why I would be voting for John McCain even though I
dislike the man. After all, I have written that McCain is a
bully, that he responded terribly at first to the credit crisis,
that he did poorly in several debates, and that the political
wisdom of his choice of Sarah Palin was highly dubious. And lots
of other criticisms.
To be fully honest, it would go to some lengths to explain that
the best reason to vote for John McCain is probably that it would
keep Barack Obama from being president — because Obama is a
radical with very few real achievements, incredibly thin
experience, and no record of having been tested in a crisis.
Starting from when he was 12 years old and was mentored by an
openly Communist poet, continuing through his days at Columbia
(the same time terrorist William Ayers was there), his long and
extensive associations with Ayers and with PLO apologist
whatshisame Khalidi and with hate-spewing clergymen Jeremiah
Wright and Michael Pfleger and with the corrupt organization
ACORN and apparently with thuggish Marxist Kenyan leader Raila
Odinga and with convicted political fixer/felon Tony Rezko, Obama
has deliberately and repeatedly associated with people who
express contempt for America or for the mainstream of American
thought. And Obama’s outrageous opposition to the Born-Alive
Infant Protection Act shows him not just to be “pro-choice,” but
to be the most radically and indeed brutally pro-abortion
presidential nominee in history. And don’t even think about his
view on how judges should be more concerned with “empathy” and
with helping the “outcast” than with actually applying the words
of the laws or the Constitution….
No, this isn’t an endorsement. Instead, it is an exercise in
putting together the most convincing and comprehensive sales
pitch for John McCain that I possibly could do, without bothering
with the drawbacks — but also with the one proviso that every
single word of it be true.
In that spirit, here is why John McCain should be the next
president of the United States:
There is something special about this country. The United States
is exceptional. We are blessed by the good Lord, and in turn we
have done more, far more, than any other people to spread freedom
across the globe, and prosperity across the globe, and human
rights across this great good Earth. We are a particularly good
people — and John McCain understands all this and believes it
with every fiber of his being, down to his very marrow, in a way
that is deeply spiritual in nature. There is nothing fake about
McCain’s belief in American Exceptionalism. His belief in this is
as genuine, and as deeply felt, as is a son’s love for his
father. He will defend this country, fight for this country, with
every last breath in his body.
And McCain has a record of making the right calls, again and
again, when it comes to securing the American national interest
around the world. He was right to back Ronald Reagan to the hilt
in the greatest foreign challenge of the past 60 years, namely
the victorious effort to win the Cold War despite the strenuous
and at times vicious opposition of the American Left. But he was
right to oppose Reagan when Reagan, with all good intentions,
decided to station Marines in Lebanon. McCain broke with his
entire party, and warned that the Marines would be sitting ducks,
and voted against the deployment. Tragically, McCain was right:
More than 200 Americans died in Lebanon in a suicide truck
bombing about a month after McCain’s warning.
McCain was right to support — and Joe Biden was wrong to oppose
— the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein in 1991. McCain was
right to support intervention in Kosovo later that decade: It
worked. He was right to support a stronger military and greater
numbers of personnel when Bill Clinton was cutting it. He was
right to fight against wasteful weapons systems, and against
corruption in military contracting. He was right to fight a
specific boondoggle involving an Air Force tanker; he brought
corruption to light (the perpetrators both in the Air Force and
at the contractor went to jail) and saved the public $6 billion.
McCain was right to say that Saddam Hussein could be overthrown
fairly quickly, with little loss of American life. He was right
to say that Hussein was a terrible threat. But he was right, very
early on, well before anybody else in the Senate, to say that it
would take more troops and a different strategy to secure the
peace after we had won the war. He broke with President Bush to
say so, way back in 2003, and he was right.
John McCain has suffered for his country in a way only a tiny
slice of the population ever has. The story is well known — not
just that he suffered in Vietcong captivity, but that he turned
down early release in a profound expression of solidarity with
his fellow prisoners. Yet McCain had the grace, when the time was
right, to hold out an olive branch to the Vietnamese a couple of
decades later when they showed a movement toward greater economic
freedom.
John McCain is committed to reaching beyond party labels. Whether
always right or wrong to do so, he really cares about doing what
he thinks is right no matter whose political ox is gored. Barack
Obama may talk a bipartisan game, but he never has actually
played on that field. The reality, meanwhile, is that sometimes
it helps conservative ends to work with people from the other
party. Ronald Reagan knew this. Ronald Reagan knew how to bring
Democratic congressmen his way — for tax cuts and for defense
improvements and for spending discipline. McCain, because of his
long record of bipartisanship, can do likewise — especially when
it comes to spending. McCain has promised to veto any bill, any
bill at all, that contains purely local-interest earmarks — and
with a veto, he can make it stick, even against a Democratic
Congress. Eventually, once he makes it stick a few times, he can
start bringing Democratic “Blue Dogs” his way on spending. Just
watch it happen: Yes, it will.
This bears repeating: No candidate for president since Barry
Goldwater has been as committed to spending discipline across the
board as John McCain is. His entire record for 25 years gives
evidence of that reality. Reagan came close to the
Goldwater/McCain level of commitment, but McCain has kept up that
fight, a lonely fight, for a quarter century. For
limited-government conservatives — actually, that’s a redundancy
— this McCainite stubbornness should be cause for far deeper
appreciation than it has received.
McCain also has the right instincts on the key issue of the
judiciary. It may not be at the top of his list of importance,
but he does, unambiguously, favor the appointment of judges who
carefully construe the actual text of the Constitution and laws
and are willing to be bound by those texts no matter what their
own policy preferences. McCain’s judicial nominees would be far
more likely, by light years, than would be Obama’s nominees, to
maintain the Constitution’s balance between national and state
governments, and its restrictions on Congress’s powers. His
judges would be less likely to make decisions based on their
preferred policy results — but, because the Constitution is
written as it is, a close adherence to the text would result in
less hostility to religion, less hostility to honest police
action, less hostility to private property, and less hostility to
local community standards than would the radically liberal judges
of the sort Obama favors.
Also, John McCain is an individualist. He believes in private
action. He believes that individuals can live their lives
responsibly without government acting as nanny and overseer and
ultimate decision-maker on virtually every aspect of daily life.
McCain trusts people with their own hard-earned money. McCain has
never voted for a tax hike. McCain has supported almost every
important tax-cut proposal for 25 years. Even on the two cuts he
opposed, he stringently has supported keeping the lower level
once it was set: It is a point of honor to him that American
taxpayers should be able to count on lower tax rates once they
are established and once they have begun to make plans based on
those rates. McCain particularly understands that investors —
pensioners, 401(k) holders, homeowners — are the engine of the
economy, and that American investors right now are at a huge
disadvantage to the entire rest of the developed world because
our investment taxes are higher. McCain will cut investment
taxes, and that’s a very good thing for everybody.
Finally, there can be no doubt, none whatsoever, that John McCain
will brook no corruption in his administration. Woe be to the
appointee who would risk sullying McCain’s vaunted honor by
crooked deals and self-serving actions. It is likely that no
administration in history will be so concerned with maintaining
high ethical standards as a McCain administration would. And it
will be blessed relief to have an administration where not even a
hint of scandal will be even whispered by honest observers.
So there you have it: John McCain as a patriot firmly rooted in
the American traditions of free enterprise, limited government,
strong defense, personal accountability, and a decent respect for
the cultural standards of the broad middle of the American
public. Those are the constituent elements of American
exceptionalism — and to his great credit, John McCain is an
American exceptionalist, and an exceptional American.
