I received a pleasant surprise this morning while watching Bob Schieffer interview Senator John McCain on Face the Nation. The surprise was the reappearance of the candid and honest John McCain we used to know before the 2008 presidential election campaign. It reminded me of the McCain of the 2000 "Straight Talk Express" days, of the man who used to be my favorite Republican. It was good to see him back.
There he was, telling Schieffer that torture is not only illegal, but immoral and ineffective. "Under torture, a prisoner will tell you anything he thinks you want to hear," said McCain, sounding like either a peacenik or a man who knows something about torture first hand.
He spoke of going to Iraq with his friend, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. There they were allowed to talk to a man McCain referred to as, "an al Qaeda operative." The Arizona lawmaker related how he had asked the man how al Qaeda had begun making inroads in Iraq. "The first opportunity came in the general chaos after the American invasion, when there was no law and order in the country." "The second," he said, "came after the news about Abu Ghraib reached the people. Suddenly, there were thousands of young men eager to join our ranks." By relating this story it is clear that McCain gets it.
During the election campaign this McCain was nowhere to be found. The former proponent of American morality and adherence to international law and civilized behavior had adopted a strategy founded on appealing to the conservative base of the Republican Party alone. That group refuses to hear of anything the country might be able to improve upon, so during the election race McCain turned to backing the Bush-Cheney "enhanced interrogation" regime and ridiculing Obama's promise to abide by U.S. law and common decency.
It is good to see that now out of the grip of his campaign team of Rove-trained pols and an imagined need to draw distinctions with Obama even where he was clearly right, McCain has returned to sense and to his ethical center. It does not say much for the Republican base when its candidate feels he must cater to its mythologies at election time to win its votes, even when he knows they are not only erroneous but against his own principles as well. Those who will not hear the truth can never face reality and correct mistakes.
Welcome back, John. It was good to see you again.
2 comments:
I'm going to respectfully suggest the "old McCain" isn't all back yet. Not 'til he cuts from the party-line the rhetoric on health care.
No question, DH, his stance on health care is indeed the reactionary one. He's never shown much empathy on that.
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