McCain’s Transformation
July 21, 2008 6 Comments
The NY Times has a really good piece detailing the transformation of John McCain after the 2000 presidential race. It discusses the way he learned to leverage his position against the major powers in the Senate to become the most powerful Republican in the Senate.
Over the next eight years, he mastered the art of political triangulation – variously teaming up with Mr. Lott against the president or the new Republican leaders, with Democrats against Republicans, and with the president against the Democrats – to become perhaps the chamber’s most influential member.
“He was looked upon as the magic ingredient in any legislative deal; the addition of John McCain was going to greatly improve its chances of success,” said Ross K. Baker, a Rutgers University political scientist who studies the Senate.
Former Senator Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader until 2004, agreed. With the possible exception of the two party leaders, he said, “I can’t think of many senators more influential.” Mr. Daschle said that Mr. McCain’s power easily surpassed that of Mr. Lott’s successor as leader, Bill Frist, because many senators discounted Mr. Frist as the White House’s agent.
Senator McCain is certainly not without his detractors though.
To partisans on either side, Mr. McCain’s path could be puzzling, even infuriating. On the defining issue of the Iraq war, he hammered both sides: the White House for its execution of the conflict and the Democrats for their opposition. On immigration, he joined the Democrats and the White House to battle his own party. And to the Republican leaders, he was a serial turncoat on other domestic matters, marching at the head of a Democratic column into fights over tax cuts, campaign finance restrictions, Alaskan oil drilling, access to generic drugs, gun-show sales, pollution caps, the 9/11 commission and the use of torture.
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“You couldn’t tell which John McCain would come to work on any given day,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, a Democrat close to Mr. Obama.
To those readers who wish to better educate themselves about both candidates before November, this article is certainly a good place to start. Ultimately I think it reveals a complicated man who has seen unpredictability as his greatest asset.
It appears from what I’ve seen of McCain that he has much more experience reaching across the aisle and attempting to find common ground than Senator Obama. Which is why I don’t get the universal acclaim for Obama as the candidate of unity when his voting record completely contradicts such a claim on so many levels.
I don’t think I’m naive about McCain. He has a temper and I worry about his plans for Iran. And no, he’s not brilliant on the economy, but lord knows I’m not either. It’s hard to imagine finding a person that would be an expert on everything. In truth though I think he really enjoys working with a variety of people and he likes the idea of bi-partisan efforts.
Obama was campaigning for President from the moment he was elected to the Senate, so it’s hard to see what his true mentality is at he federal level sometimes, but his record in Illinois was terrible.
“his record in Illinois was terrible.”
Do you know enough to post on this. It is something I know very little about.
BTW, am I the only one who wonders how and why he has gotten away with this message of opposing the Iraq war from the start as if it has some moral authority. He wasn’t even a Senator when the authorization to use force vote took place. My point, it is easy to oppose the war when you are a mid-western state Senator who didn’t have to cast a vote on the measure. And given his latest move toward the center I am not convinced that he would have voted against the war had he been in the Senate at the time.
Also, I echo your sentiments about McCain. But I will take him over an inexperienced politician with a messianic following who has an ego big enough to justify two autobiographies before the age of 45 any day of the week.
I would start here for more info on his Illinois record.
I might have to do a post on that one…
Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, beliving nothing we cannot measure or weigh.JohnSteinbeckJohn Steinbeck, Travels With Charley
America may be the best country in the world, but that’s kind of like being the valedictorian of summer school.DennisMillerDennis Miller