Imagining President Mccain

THE ENIGMA: McCain’s heroism isn’t in question, but his beliefs are.

Image: Jim Young

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Washington, January 20, 2009—John McCain was sworn in as the 44th president at noon today, vowing to end “the era of rancor” and pledging to work with Democrats to vanquish what he called the triple peril of terrorism, climate change, and runaway entitlement spending. “These are the challenges that have the potential to end the dream we call America,” McCain told an estimated crowd of more than 200,000 assembled in heavy snow at the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

With Chief Justice John Roberts administering the oath of office, McCain struck a bipartisan note, issuing an invitation to top Democratic leaders to visit the White House for an emergency meeting. Conservatives, who have been wary of McCain for years, have grown increasingly so since his election and the appointment of several prominent Democrats to his cabinet. Many were despairing after yesterday’s address … (View a slideshow of who's shaping McCain's thinking.)

Well, we can dream, can’t we?

If there’s going to be a President McCain, I hope it’s the one portrayed above: the reflexively bipartisan one who sponsored bills with Democrats John Edwards (patients’ bill of rights), Russ Feingold (campaign-finance reform), and Ted Kennedy (immigration); one of just two Senate Republicans who opposed the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and one of three in 2003; the centrist who valiantly tried to steer a Big Tobacco settlement through Congress in 1998, ending years of litigation in exchange for stringent regulation. The McCain I want is the one who recognizes climate change as a real threat and who understands that entitlements can undo the economy. That’s the one a lot of executives want too.

Unfortunately, we could get the McCain of this year’s presidential campaign, the one who now says that he wants to make permanent the Bush tax cuts he once opposed and that he would vote against his own immigration-reform bill if it came before him. The politics of hope? When it comes to McCain, it’s all about hoping the right McCain shows up.

That’s because, at 71, McCain is still among the most protean political figures in American life. This is particularly true with regard to economics, which is distressing at a time when Wall Street institutions are imploding and no one really knows when this credit mess will end. After more than two decades in Congress, the senior senator from Arizona told the Boston Globe last year, “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.”

McCain aides insist that he meant it in a self-deprecating way and that he knows plenty. But when he was asked during a debate in January whom he’d listen to on the economy, he pointed to the budget-cutting scolds of the Concord Coalition as well as who-cares-about-the-deficit tax slashers like Jack Kemp. Which is it? His website made no mention of backing Bush’s plan for private Social Security savings accounts. Then in March, he said he was for them, surprising even the Wall Street Journal. In that same month, he also said a dismal jobs report was “not terrible.” Huh?

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