THE SENATOR FROM MCCAIN:

The sky is not falling (Tony Blankley, 9/10/03, Townhall)

Our Founding Fathers got it almost completely wrong. They worried about an uninformed and easily excitable public losing its mind and demanding shortsighted government actions that would undercut our long-term interests. They feared mobs running wild in the streets. So they designed a form of government -- and particularly the Senate -- that would be slow to act or react to the passing public tempests. But it turns out that the public is the cool, mature and stoic element of our society, while the Washington politicians -- particularly the senators -- and the media that cover them, are running wild, shrieking "all is lost" in Iraq and the war on terrorism.

In Senate hearings yesterday, Senator McCain -- who once upon a time in a Vietnamese sky above and prison below, showed such courage, patriotism and noble patience during his heroic service to our country -- couldn't have been more rude and interruptive during the testimony of Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz. He would cut off the Deputy Secretary in mid-sentence to try to distort the meaning of the testimony. But then, the television cameras were running at the time. The senator is known to be gracious with prospective witnesses in private, before their testimony, only to rip them apart in the nationally televised portion of the event.

The Senator is even better known for aping whatever's the current line of the NY Times editorial page. It will be amusing though to watch all these sunshine patriots scramble to cover their tails as the Iraq story fades away over the next six months, with us drawing down and the Iraqis taklng over.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 10, 2003 09:55 AM