Rattling the Cage: What's McCain doing in the GOP?

The GOP campaign has been filthy - basically one long exercise in character assassination against Barack Obama - and McCain wants no part of it.

By LARRY DERFNER
larry derfner 88 (photo credit: )
larry derfner 88
(photo credit: )
Poor John McCain. Such an admirable man. A reasonable man, too - a moderate, not an extremist. It's too bad he got in with a bad crowd. If he'd joined the Democrats instead of the Republicans when he got out of the navy, he might have been president by now - and as a Democrat, I think he might have made a very good president. But as a Republican, in this day and age? He's not a maverick; he's a fish out of water. It's painful to watch him. The GOP campaign, at the grassroots and cyberspace level, has been filthy - basically one long exercise in character assassination against Barack Obama - and McCain wants no part of it. He was introduced at one rally by some bigot who started hooting about "Barack Hussein Obama" - and McCain denounced him for it. At another rally a woman told McCain she didn't trust Obama because "he's an Arab," and McCain took the microphone from her and said, "No ma'am. No ma'am. He's a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with..." Everyone thought that by now, the Republican campaign would be all Jeremiah Wright, all the time, which would have absolutely poisoned the American atmosphere - but McCain flat out forbade it. And while he hasn't ordered a blackout on the William Ayers issue, he's barely been able to bring himself to mention it. It's a bogus issue. It's a demagogue's issue, a Swift Boater's issue, and McCain isn't bogus, nor a demagogue, nor a Swift Boater. WHAT'S A nice guy like him doing in political party like that? He didn't want Sarah Palin as his running mate - he wanted his friend Joe Lieberman, another admirable, reasonable man. But his advisers talked him out of it, insisting that the right-wing Republican "base" wouldn't stand for a pro-choice, economic liberal like Lieberman, whereas they'd be thrilled by a small-town, Christian culture warrior like Palin. If he'd been a Democrat, McCain never would have been faced with such a choice. But, being a Republican, he was obliged by the party's powerful to go for the ignorant demagogue. Now Palin is running around slandering Obama for "palling around with terrorists," and slandering everyone who isn't a small-town Republican for being, you know, not really "pro-America." Meanwhile, McCain is disappearing. He's become irrelevant to the campaign. It's really between Obama and Palin - because Palin is the only true Republican in the race, the only candidate with crazy, radical ideas, the only one with the heart for a vicious, truly Republican-style fight for power. THERE WAS a time when McCain really was a maverick - a Republican with some notably liberal views. He once chastised right-wing evangelical leaders for being "agents of intolerance." He at first opposed President George W. Bush's tax cuts as a gift to the rich. He stood against the Republican mainstream on immigration, global warming and torture. As one of 100 senators, he could get away with that - but not as GOP leader. To be the standard-bearer of such a doctrinaire movement, he's had to fall into line. His campaign platform is orthodox Republican. He's sold out many of his political principles for power - but he's drawn the line at his moral principles, at his decency. That he hasn't sold out. No matter what McCain would have done, no matter whom he'd have chosen as running mate, he could not have won this election, not after the hurricane that's hit the American economy. No Republican could win this election. Neither could he have remade the GOP in his own true image - as a moderate, secular party that distinguished itself from the Democrats mainly with a tougher foreign policy. The popularity of Sarah Palin among Republican crowds shows where the party's heart lies; McCain couldn't have changed that. If he made a fateful mistake, it was in turning down John Kerry's offer of the number-two spot on the 2004 Democratic ticket. Or you could say it was in joining the Republicans in the first place, but back then, in the early 1980s, the Democrats were pretty much out to sea, while the Republicans, under Ronald Reagan, were the rising power with the clear, confident foreign policy that McCain identifies with most of all. SO WHILE I think it's only right for Democrats to loathe the Republican Party, we should show a lot of respect for John McCain. He's a man of honor. If it weren't for him, Obama would be getting slimed much, much worse than he is, and America would be a much meaner-spirited country for it. I hope his all-but-certain loss on November 4 isn't the end of his career. There's probably going to be a split in the GOP between the moderate reformers and the radical old guard, and McCain would be an important voice, an elder statesman, for the reformers. Then there's another possibility. If Obama really intends to "reach across the aisle" as president, I'm sure he could find a good cabinet post for his current opponent. How about secretary of defense? McCain is certainly qualified. In a Democratic administration, I think he'd be a natural for the job.