McCain & honor

Good news for my long-suffering readers: I'm officially giving up following the Republican presidential primary for Lent! ... Starting tomorrow.

But before then, please do check out Yuval Levin's take on John McCain's peculiar brand of "honor politics." It may just be the most insightful thing I've read this season. A sample:

McCain has made the most of his unusual approach to politics throughout his
career, developing his own special brand of honor politics, which in practice is
often a form of anger politics. It makes him terribly prickly and
self-righteous, but also determined and often successful. The substance of his
crusades has turned off a lot of conservatives, and rightly so, but the tone can
be quite effective. And when it is directed to a cause conservatives share —
most notably the war — the Right can take real pleasure in his
passion.

More important, it’s all McCain has got, and he needs to make the most of
it, and not try to pretend he’s something he’s not. To both his credit and his
detriment, McCain just can’t pretend. Rather than attempt a feeble imitation of
Ronald Reagan (the ubiquitous mistake of this campaign) and try to paint the
grand conservative vision of things, McCain needs to train himself at least to
oppose the things conservatives oppose — paternalism that corrupts the roots of
personal initiative and self-reliance, a callous disregard for the lives of the
innocent unborn, hostility to our cultural traditions, cosmopolitanism that sees
nothing special in America — and so to channel his anger in politically (not to
mention substantively) healthy directions. That can be his way of building
bridges, and it can also be an effective way of organizing his campaign’s themes
going forward.

By the by, here's McCain's speech at CPAC yesterday, which I thought was very good.

It's Mac for me

My friend Robert George explains why he voted -- begrudgingly -- for John McCain this morning. I did, too, though for somewhat different reasons.

In the end, my growing doubts about McCain's unsettling tendency to treat every single political dispute as a matter of deep personal honor -- or about the smallness of his "patriotism v. profit" attack on Romney during the last debate -- didn't quite sway me. Winston Churchill did.

If there's one dominant theme running throughout Churchill's vast historical corpus, it's that prosperous democracies, for all their advantages, are notoriously fickle when it comes to dealing with foreign threats. They can rise to meet them better than anyone once the threat becomes obviously existential, but as soon as it fades, they take their collective eye off the ball -- to the cost of a lot more blood and treasure a few years later.

This is something McCain, with his instinctual value for national honor, understands -- making him a needed candidate for a time when troop deaths in Iraq are down and a dubious National Intelligence Estimate has nudged Iran off the radar screen.

Romney, meanwhile, may be saying all the right things, but his manager's belief in "fixing" "problems" doesn't inspire confidence that he has the judgmental categories to fight a war, with its uncertain constantly changing jumble of human passions.

And while I've got my reasons to trust at least McCain's sincerity on judges and tax cuts, I've seen nothing to indicate that Romney would make the war a priority when push comes to shove. It's not where he's comfortable.

By the by, if there is such a thing as McCain Derangement Syndrome, this piece comes perilously close. McCarthy labels McCain a "multilateralist" for thinking that a president needs to be open to persuading our allies of the rightness of our actions.

Except that McCain's right. One of the great tragedies of 2003 was, in fact, Bush's indulgence of cheap -- though understandable -- anti-Europeanism. Old Europe, ultimately, was never going to come along on Iraq. But how much ill will could Bush have averted by simply going to Europe and reminding Europeans of our common struggles against tyranny? If McCain believes the best for the old Atlantic alliance, good for him; we may need it one day.

It shouldn't even need to be said that he would never bow to their sniping where he sees national security at stake. But a President McCain whose perceived "independence" could actually pull supporters back to our general FP viewpoint remains one of my big hopes -- especially if he picks a running mate who can talk a good game. Though I'm open to being disappointed.

Romney in Michigan

A decisive victory for Mitt tonight -- makes the race a lot more interesting. Here's his speech. It still fascinates me how quickly Romney's transformed himself into the populist anti-Washington crusader. You can almost tell from the speech how new he is to it -- "but hey, it's working, and I kind of like it too." People who know and like Romney say he's got a solid core -- that he really believes what he says, even on the positions he's come to recently. I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I'll still have to think this through some more, but I'd say the greater problem with Romney's slickness is that it indicates not a fundamental lack of conviction, but rather a lack of political shame. He repackages himself far too easily -- even if it's the same Mitt inside -- which makes me suspect that he's got a businessman's impatience for the emotional pathos necessary for true statesmanship, especially in a time of war (notice the lack of nearly any reference to terrorism in his speech). Rich Lowry -- presumably a Romney guy himself; his magazine certainly is -- gives evidence (not online) in the latest issue of National Review.

Along those lines, Romney's constant denunciations of "Washington" this and "Washington" rubbed me the wrong way. One wonders whether "Washington" would fare any better at the hands of a 15-part PowerPoint presentation than with some Obama-esqe incantations of "hope" and "unity."

And then there's this line, by far the most awkward of the speech:

"I take my inspiration from Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush, who took their inspiration from the American people."

George Herbert Walker Bush? Nothing against the guy, but that's the first time I've heard him mentioned as a source of conservative inspiration. Unless Romney's very obviously trying to leave someone out.

Not that there's anything wrong with criticizing Dubya, either, but it strikes me that there's something deeply unserious about the way Romney does it. Bush isn't optimistic enough? Please.

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To be fair, if Romney lacks pathos, McCain's fault probably lies at the other extreme, as John Podhoretz contends:

"Romney may not have won in Michigan so much as McCain lost it. And he lost it because of a characteristic tendency that makes him Romney’s opposite — political rigidity based on a sense of his own personal rectitude. Having said jobs in Michigan were not coming back, he went to Michigan and praised efforts to mandate an increase in fuel-mileage standards, which auto executives claim will raise the price of a car fully $6,000 — a job killer, in other words. And he spoke against drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, which is the only realistic way for the United States to increase its own domestic oil supply.

"McCain’s line is that he is a straight talker. But there are moments he seems to make a fetish of his own honesty, and asks others to support him solely because of it."

Hmm... Pathos plus Prudence -- anyone? I'm starting to think that Shakespeare would have a field day with the tragic flaws of the current field.

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Only caught the final half-hour of the Democratic debate tonight, but was instantly impressed by how boring it seemed. The nice thing about still having a diverse jumbled Republican field is that it leaves room for serious and contentious policy debates -- many of which the current candidates still need to have. Clinton and Obama, by contrast, don't seem to have much more of anything to say. All the policies are on the table, with widespread similarities. All that remains is a contest of likability and tactics (i.e., hope v. experience). And as we're already seeing, that kind of race can get ugly real fast.

McCain and Obama

A none-too-daring prediction, and a pre-primary appetizer. Here's a really smart David Brooks piece on the pair. Brooks makes the important point that despite their common appeal to independent voters (and reputations for positiveness and honesty), they're really very different men in the kind of vision they offer -- and not just policy-wise.

My hope for an Obama-McCain general election (though that's still far to early to call; given this primary season, we could just as easily see Edwards-Thompson) would be that this precise dynamic -- similar general appeal, vastly different ideas -- could elevate the debate to a level we've been conditioned not to expect.

Especially on Iraq. If this election is going to be some kind of referendum on where we should go from here (it probably should be, though I'm far from convinced it actually will), what better two candidates than the guy who opposed the war from the beginning, and the guy who supported the surge three years before Bush did? Serious debate between likable guys, all at a distance from the visceral passions conjured by names like Clinton and Bush.

But we'll see. Pronouncements like this one still seem scandalously premature.