John?

Senator McCain gets interrogative punctuation instead of the supererogatory exclamation mark. I think he earned it.

McCain and his wife sat for an extended interview on FOXNews Sunday with Chris Wallace yesterday. It was all you needed to know about his candidacy, watchable in a half hour with TiVo. McCain was stalwart and eloquent on the war, reminding me that -- should he win the GOP nomination -- I will support him 100%.

Yet his other positions were open to view as well. Dean Barnett at Hugh Hewitt says he "fired serial bulls-eyes at both feet" and I cannot contradict: Here's Barnett's take:

McCain defended the salubrious effects of the McCain/Feingold abomination, and then added that the issue doesn’t really matter since no one really cares about free speech outside the Beltway. (I’m paraphrasing, of course.) He also strangely suggested that we close Gitmo and transfer the detainees to Leavenworth, apparently because the Kansas climate will do them good. Chris Wallace’s questioning forced him to implausibly maintain that although he was one of three Republicans who voted against the Bush tax cuts, he would resolutely defend them once in the Oval Office.

But his real misstep was on the matter of torture. Senator McCain addresses this particular topic from a unique vantage-point. Although I’m always wary of the Absolute Moral Authority™ argument, on this subject Senator McCain comes pretty darn close to having just that. But he’s still not right.

Barnett goes on to draw a superb comparison between the abortion debate and torture. I suggest the whole post.

I'd happily join Senator McCain, saying that "we don't torture" The moral high ground is valuable, and he is right to question its efficacy. But Barnett is right to suggest that a lot of flexibility remains in the language and its application. I would never, never, never, suggest that we put a human being through half of what the Senator was subjected to in Vietnam.

But sadly the McCain-Andrew Sullivan definition of torture is now accepted. I have zero problem having a female interrogate one of these backward 7th century people. I find it amusing that they are so bothered and I like to use our open-mindedness as a weapon against them. I think the panties-on-the-head at Abu Ghraib was unprofessional, but I still find myself able to fly the flag on holidays.

Loud rock music? It would work on AlexC... Cold temperatures? Waterboarding? I'd start to limit some of these to high value targets. But to expose somebody to discomfort with a very small chance of injury seems fair.

Thanks to Barnett's brilliant post, I have digressed. McCain called for closing Gitmo, recognizing global warming, and he strongly defended McCain-Feingold, saying that the side effects are failures of enforcement, not legislative flaws. And he said that nobody in town hall meetings ever brings it up. "They all want health care and entitlement reform," said the Senator, suggesting that only inside the beltway wonks cared about such things.

John? By all means, if we must.

2008 Race Posted by jk at April 30, 2007 12:12 PM