McCain as Maverick

In yesterday's post I explained why John McCain is essentially and genuinely a conservative. Today I'll take a look at why, if that is the case, he has frequently diverged from the Republican Party line on important issues. When he does this it is invariably for one of three reasons. Sometimes he doesn't feel the Party is being truly conservative. At other times he is flexible enough to be persuaded by the facts. And on other occasions he is simply tacking with the flow for political advantage.

Sometimes McCain opposes his own party because he feels it is not being conservative enough, based on the way he understands conservatism. This is particularly true on ethics issues. That's why McCain helped assemble a coalition composed mainly of Democrats to pass the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform in 2002, why he has tried to include provisions against torture in intelligence authorization bills since the invasion of Iraq and why he pursued the Abramoff corruption scandal so avidly. His view of conservatism includes the concept of America as moral beacon.

His early brush with special interest scandal in the Keating Five case back in the 1980s opened his eyes to the corrosive and corrupting effects of special interest money on the political process. Like many Democrats he shares this view for moral reasons, but reasons that he sees as conservative. The people's money gets wasted on things that aren't necessary because of special interest influence-buying. America's moral influence in the world is compromised by the use of torture. Free and honest political debate does not take place when unaccountable organizations are able to flood the political parties with unlimited amounts of money with strings attached. He has often run afoul of his own party on these issues because they were the ones getting the lions' share of these monies and did not want to change a system that advantaged them. He pushed for them anyway, based on the moral considerations he saw as "true" conservatism.

On matters of pragmatic policy McCain has been at odds with many in his party because he has been sincerely persuaded by the facts. He opposed the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 because he felt that too much of the relief went to the richest few and the cuts would balloon the deficit. He has come to the conclusion, based on nearly unanimous scientific consensus, that global warming is real and largely caused by human activity. He supports a carbon cap and trade system to provide incentives for remediation. He worked for comprehensive immigration reform with Ted Kennedy rather than simply support a "wall 'em off, round 'em up and ship 'em out" strategy because he recognized the utter futility of such an approach. In all these instances he, unlike most of his congressional Republican colleagues, prioritized fact and logic over preconception and political calculation in coming to his decisions.

Finally, despite his predilection for taking what he sees as principled stands, he is politician enough to turn one hundred eighty degrees when the political winds change direction. Note that his "flip flops" have all been cases of diverging from Republican orthodoxy, getting stopped and then returning to embrace the party line. This tendency became pronounced as he sought the Republican nomination and now moves to unify his party base in preparation for the general election campaign. It is the case on the tax cuts, which he now endorses and claims he opposed only because they were not accompanied by commensurate spending cuts. He has similarly done an about-face on immigration, speaking no more about guest workers and paths to citizenship but only of stronger border enforcement. He finally dropped his insistence on anti-torture language, voting for President Bush's intelligence bill without it. When it came down to it, he wouldn't allow anyone an opening to call him "soft on terrorism." McCain also remains all but mute on economic issues. If you go to his web site you will find no heading on "economy," or "jobs." These disingenuous tendencies are part of the man as well.

So all in all, the picture of John McCain that emerges in our two-part investigation is that of a candidate who remains as true as he can to what he sees as conservative principles but is more open than most conservatives to facts that challenge their conventional wisdom. And, when blocked, he will make the political moves he feels necessary to get where he wants to go.