Some of the most fervent leftist 2008 supporters of Barack Obama are now expressing their disappointment over Obama 2010, who they say is far more centrist or (here comes the dirty word for them) moderate than they believed he would be. But Obama’s liberal/leftist/progressive (choose the word that least offends you) critics are nowhere as disappointed or shocked as those who supported Senator John McCain in 2000.
The John McCain of 2010 is increasingly the anthetisis of the McCain many independents and moderates supported in 2000. Seldom in American history has a politician so utterly repudiated his past persona. In fact, to watch McCain today is to pick up an attitude that you don’t usually pick up in people who had run for President: someone who truly seems angry over having lost and (so let’s say it) seems to want to get even. The 2010 McCain seems increasingly angry and eager to distance himself from the way he used to be perceived.
Nowhere is this more evident in his stunningly contradictory atittude towards Don’t Ask Don’t Tell that is captured by the Cagle Cartoon above.
McCain’s recent Senate hearing performance revealed a grumpy seemingly bitter politician. Unless there’s a shift, most expect McCain to filibuster Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’s repeal, even though military officials ask for it.
Even when Richard Nixon became the New Nixon and in office reverted to the perceived Old Nixon, it was less stunning a political spectacle of the man perceived in 2000 to be an often unpredictable center-right Republican morphing onto one more ideological pol whose past positions are seemingly discounted as suits his whim — or his tactical political needs.
Watch these clips of the 2010 McCain — a McCain who today would not receive the adulation on college campuses, would have trouble doing as well with his book sales despite his incredible personal courage narrative and who today would be the subject of a derisive Saturday Night Live sketch, rather than the seemingly joyous McCain who appeared on the show and hit home runs in the show’s comedy sketches (even one where he wore a wig and played then Attorney General John Ashcroft).
And here’s the John McCain of 2006 versus the John McCain of 2010 on gays in the military. This is not a SMALL contrast or small shift in position:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khmAaz07dPY
CBS offers more of the 2010 John McCain on the issue:
The full video of the hearing can be seen HERE.
On the other hand, John McCain has brought Americans together: he is not trusted by many liberals, conservatives and independent voters.
But he can be trusted these days to repudiate the 2000 John McCain, which he is doing quite effectively and systematically.
UPDATE: The Atlantic’s James Fallows has some of the same vibes on the 2010 New But Not Necessary Improved John McCain:
I have been trying to think of a comparable senior public figure who, in the later stages of his or her career, narrowed rather than broadened his view of the world and his appeals to history’s judgment. I’m sure there are plenty (on two minutes’ reflection, I’ll start with Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh), but the examples that immediately come to mind go the other way.
George C. Wallace, once a firebrand of segregation, eventually became a kind of racial-healing figure near the end of his troubled life. There was something similar in the very long and winding path of Strom Thurmond (or Robert Byrd). Or Teddy Kennedy, who sharpened the ideological edge of his rhetoric as the years went on, but who increasingly valued his ability to work with rather than against his Republican counterparts in the Senate. Barry Goldwater went through the same evolution from the opposite starting point. Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara, different kinds of peaceniks by the end. We know that for humanity in general, the passing years can often make people closed-minded and embunkered in their views. But for people in public life, it seems to me, surprisingly often the later years bring an awareness of the chanciness and uncertainty of life, the folly of bitterness, the long-term advantage of a big-tent rather than a purist approach.
John McCain seems intentionally to be shrinking his audience, his base, and his standing in history. It’s unnecessary, and it is sad.
The Frum Forum’s Jeb Golinkin:
In 2006, McCain famously said the “day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy,’ then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to.” McCain points to the Marine Commandant (currently General James F. Amos) as evidence that the nation’s military leadership does not support repealing DADT. Well, General Amos is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But the nation’s highest ranking military officer is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, who does support repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
And then of course, there is the biggest kahuna of them all, General David Petraeus. General Petraeus has told the Senate Armed Service Committee that “the time has come” to repeal DADT.
If Senator McCain opposes repeal, fine, but the nation’s top military leaders, BOTH civilian and uniformed, generally agree that it’s time for the policy to go.
But that will matter little to the 2010 McCain. (Re-read the Fallows quote above..)
More blog reaction on McCain’s performance in the hearing is HERE.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.