JOHNNY, WE HARDLY KNEW YE :

The Democrats' Best Hope : YES, MCCAIN SHOULD RUN. NO, NOT AS AN INDEPENDENT (Jonathan Chait, 04.16.02, New Republic)

The degree to which McCain has abandoned contemporary conservatism is reflected in the legislative program he has championed since Bush took office. Most notably, of course, he shepherded campaign finance reform--an effort that put him in close cooperation with Democrats in Congress. McCain also collaborated with liberal Democrats John Edwards and Ted Kennedy on a patients' bill of rights; with Charles Schumer on more widespread sale of generic prescription drugs; with Ernest Hollings to put federal employees in charge of airport security--all of which set him against fierce business lobbying. And he teamed up with Evan Bayh to promote AmeriCorps, an effort Bush later co-opted with his own smaller AmeriCorps boost.

But perhaps most amazing has been McCain's willingness to take stands even many Democrats are afraid of. He voted against Bush's tax cut, the centerpiece of the new president's agenda. Along with John Kerry, he sponsored legislation to raise automobile emissions standards, and he paired with Joe Lieberman to try to force Bush to reduce greenhouse gases in compliance with the Kyoto accord. Also with Lieberman, McCain has proposed forcing people who buy firearms at gun shows to undergo background checks--closing the "gun-show loophole"--even as most Democrats shy away from any form of gun control. He has infuriated the gambling industry by proposing to ban wagering on college sports. And along with Carl Levin, he has co-sponsored a bill to force companies that deduct executive stock options from their taxes to disclose the cost on their financial statements--another effort few Democrats have been willing to join.

One conclusion to draw from all this is simply that McCain has guts. But there's more to it than that. McCain's domestic agenda increasingly consists of bold reforms that expand the scope of the federal government. During the campaign, McCain paid lip service to anti-government bromides while supporting government intervention in specific instances. In the last year though, his ideology has grown coherently progressive. "We have had regulatory agencies always to curb the abuses or potential abuses of the capitalist system," he said earlier this year on cbs's "Face the Nation." "This is not a totally laissez-faire country." McCain, in other words, now believes in progressive government to counteract the excesses of the market and recognizes that the mere fact that business interests complain about such intervention does not by itself make it wrong. There is a term for people who think like this: Democrats.

If you believe in expanding a $2 Trillion government and increasing taxes to pay for it, support adding new entitlement programs to the welfare state, oppose the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution, support gay rights and abortion, etc., you are indeed a Democrat. And McCain would be far and away the Democrats best presidential candidate. He is far more hawkish than even George W. Bush--he'd have already attacked Iraq and probably a couple other countries too--and he no longer differs with Democrats on any significant issues.

But Mickey Kaus takes a different view, largely on the basis of McCain's opposition to affirmative action and how tacky it would look to switch parties, especially in wartime. Both of these objections though assume that McCain is the man portrayed by his legions of obsequious supporters in the media, rather than the candidate who reversed his position on nearly every issue when he ran for President in 2000. Surely he will change his mind about something as minor as racial quotas if he was willing to change his mind about abortion. And why would anyone believe that someone who is willing to change his supposed core political beliefs at the drop of a hat would be bothered by appearing tacky, especially when he knows that the press will collaborate in making it look like his switch was the product of deep soul-searching and painful disillusionment with the radical Right, led by George W. Bush? Folks like Mr. Kaus seem to persist in the belief, which many of us shared prior to the Keating scandal, that Mr. McCain is a man guided by principle. But his eager embrace of anti-constitutional Campaign Finance Reform, his cutting and trimming in the last set of presidential primaries, and his performance during this Senate session make it quite clear that he is guided, almost solely, by personal political ambition.

That's not necessarily a bad thing for the Democrats; they did pretty well with the not dissimilar Bill Clinton. But it's somewhat foolhardy for a pundit to make predictions based on the assumption that Mr. McCain is not one to act out of opportunism. When opportunity knocks, the Senator seems likely to answer.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 17, 2002 4:07 PM