Call it the McCainian Law of Inverse Proportionality: the more the Arizona senator is forced to talk about specific policies and proposals, the less “straight talk” he seems to conjure up.
Seeing as we’ve already chided McCain for his hypocrisy on “the specifics”–like when he taunted Obama for preferring “platitudes” to “proven ideas,” then delivered an education speech far more platitudinous than what his rival said on the subject four months earlier–we’re glad to see that he’s spent recent weeks getting down to the nitty-gritty. First came a foreign-policy address in Los Angeles on March 26. Next up was an economic speech in Pittsburgh on April 15. And today he’s in Tampa, Fla. to talk health care as part of a week-long “Call to Action” tour. But there’s a problem. See, McCain’s in a bit of political bind. To beat a Democrat to the White House, he needs to rev up the Republican base (which has long been wary of his maverick tendencies) while somehow managing to simultaneously snag a sizable swath of the swing vote (which has long been open to his charms). Torn between these conflicting goals–and cognizant of the need to actually, you know, say what he plans to do as president–McCain has recently come down with a nagging case of electoral schizophrenia. One moment, he’s indulging in political posturing. The next he’s demonstrating some common sense. The result? A hopelessly muddled message.
Take last month’s foreign-policy speech. After months of denouncing Democrats for waving the “white flag of surrender” in Mesopotamia, McCain intended to use the address as an opportunity to show off his moderate, non-warmonger side. To that end, he distanced himself from President Bush’s unilateralism, affirming that Americans, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, must show “decent respect to the opinions of mankind. He also took a break from saying “stay the course in Iraq” long enough to touch on other important topics, like nuclear proliferation, global warming, free trade and fighting AIDS. So far, so good. But as my NEWSWEEK colleague Fareed Zakaria has already pointed out, the senator couldn’t resist kowtowing to hard-core neoconservatives as well. In what Zakaria called “the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years,” McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia and exclude China from the G8–in effect adopting “a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers” that “would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order… [and] alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war.” So much for any moderating effect. “[McCain’s] speech reads like it was written by two very different people,” wrote Zarkaria, “each one given an allotment of a few paragraphs on every topic.”
His forays into economics have been equally disorienting. After months of repeating the familiar GOP mantra of fighting pork and extending Bush’s tax cuts–and admitting that “the issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should”–McCain finally waded into economic waters with a series of three oscillating speeches in late March and early April. In the first, he reassured right-wing skeptics by arguing that the government shouldn’t intervene on behalf of borrowers and lenders hit by the housing crisis. But when one of his top supporters, Sen. Mel Martinez, awarded McCain “an incomplete” for his efforts–and others compared him to do-nothing Depressionist Herbert Hoover–the senator changed tack, striking compassionate notes two weeks later in a speech that called on the government to help needy homeowners with loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration. “Let me make it clear that in these challenging times, I am committed to using all the resources of this government and great nation to create opportunity and make sure that every deserving American has a good job and can achieve their American dream,” declared Obama Clinton McCain. Predictably, conservatives carped.
McCain’s next move? Go to Pittsburgh on April 15 and get specific. But his most noteworthy proposal from that event–a lifting of the federal excise tax on gasoline between Memorial Day and Labor Day–turned out to be exactly the sort of political gimmickry he’s long decried. For starters, McCain’s tax holiday would begin and end several months before the next president takes office–making it “more of a thought balloon than a plan,” according to the Oregonian. What’s more, leading economists say the break would do little to lower the prices at the pump, instead producing higher demand, higher prices–and higher profits for the oil companies. In the end, the typical American family would save only about $40 per car. Meanwhile, the cash-strapped federal highway fund would lose $10 billion, politicians would pat themselves on the back and the real problems–namely, our addiction to foreign oil–would remain unsolved. Maverick, indeed.
Today’s health-care roll-out was similarly conflicted. McCain has long advocated conventional conservative measures such as tax deductions and malpractice reform, but at the University of South Florida in Tampa this morning he went a step further, proposing a greater federal commitment to the uninsured. Attempting to answer critics who contend that tax incentives alone would slash employer-based coverage and leave workers with pre-existing conditions out in the cold, McCain suggested that the government fund non-profit risk pools to assist Americans who can’t afford or qualify for care. The only problem? McCain was so wary of crossing small-government conservatives with his “Guaranteed Access Plan” that he offered few specifics in the speech–“I will work with Congress, the governors, and industry to make sure that it is funded adequately,” he said, mysteriously–and didn’t mention it at all in a brand-new Iowa ad on the subject (above). Predictably, he chose to highlight his tax credits instead.
The problem isn’t that McCain is being dishonest or even disingenuous. He’s not. It’s that he isn’t particularly interested in ideology OR specifics–even though the Republican base requires the former and every rational voter, Republican or not, requires the latter. Rather, he’s in his element when waging war for a single–often politically unpopular–cause, like campaign-finance reform, or earmark elimination, or Iraq. In the Senate, McCain is under enormous pressure to vote for the popular “Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act,” which is essentially a G.I. Bill for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. The measure isn’t costly, and the company–author Jim Webb and co-sponsors Chuck Hagel and John Warner–isn’t offensive. But because the military fears that the bill’s incentives would hurt overall readiness by persuading too many active duty soldiers to leave the service early, McCain opposes it. That’s exactly the sort of principled, contrarian stand on which he’s built his Senate career–and his priceless, well-deserved maverick brand. But running for president will require him to play the (sometimes conflicting) roles of right-wing firebreather and sensible policy wonk as well. So far, his performance hasn’t been particularly convincing.
