When I wrote about McCain last summer, I thought that those who were writing him off were betraying an ignorance of history and a lack of seriousness about political campaigning. I thought that a man of McCain's accomplishments would, by historic standards, be no more surprising a presence in the Oval Office than Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan. By contrast, the Democratic front-runners would. Sen. Barack Obama then had but three years' experience in the Senate and not much more of a record in state politics. Sen. Clinton, as I have mentioned above, had massive scandals and a record tracing back to Arkansas of controlling "bimbo eruptions," to which she more recently has added the fiction of her "foreign policy experience." Anyone who wishes to consult the historic record will note that the "experience" she refers to is a series of world tours that her husband's staff coaxed her into after her health care embarrassment and such snafus as Travelgate and Filegate.
In the autumn of 2006 when I crashed Bill Clinton's 60th birthday party in Toronto, I managed to be seated with his traveling aides and a few of his financial supporters. On that night, I picked up two pieces of intelligence that are pertinent in light of McCain's almost certain nomination. She was uncertain about running for president in 2008 and would wait to see how the off-year elections went in 2006. More interestingly, the Republican she most feared was McCain. Now after his most recent display of valor and political prowess, she has reason to fear him more. He is the most formidable residential candidate the Republicans have.
Not long ago, I dined with McCain's state chairman in New York, Ed Cox, a gentleman of the top chop and one of the most politically savvy people I know. Cox pronounced McCain a "post-9/11" candidate. He has learned from the challenges of 9/11, one of which is to unite Americans against our enemies abroad. Sen. Clinton is still off in the 1990s. She divides people, bemoaning the "politics of personal destruction," even as she practices them. Obama, like McCain, is post-1990s. He is a uniter, though vague about what he is uniting us for. McCain will unite us for our national security, as the great Cold War presidents did. Moreover, he has demonstrated a keen sense of national security. He was an early critic of our faltering tactics in Iraq, a brave proponent of the surge, and the first of the presidential candidates to recognize its success.
Now he needs to secure the support of his conservative base. He is already at work on that project, and surely he will succeed. What kind of conservative would reject him and allow either of the Democratic contenders to preside over our foreign or domestic policies?