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Shadow Government
Not a Republican
By John A. Jackson
Is Senator John McCain a traitor to his party-a Clintonite?
Sure, he is, according to the staunchly neo-Conservative New Republic, and even worse, a sentimentalist.
I saw the headline to that effect on Jonathan Chait's long article in the January 31 issue, and I flew to the page like a fly to spilled honey. If McCain is a heretic, it is his heresy that interests me. That is the news about Mr. McCain.
The senator, as the article notes, voted with his party 93 percent in 1996 and got a zero rating from the liberal Americans for Democratic action.
But Chait found a lot to fault in today's McCain, the presidential candidate.
First, McCain is not a real "fiscal conservative." He favors using the projected federal budget surpluses to bring down the national debt, not to cut taxes.
New-style conservatives don't mind about the debt, Chait argues. Cutting taxes is the thing.
Bringing the debt down to nothing would save the government $200 billion a year in interest payments alone, and help keep the economy growing, but the political payoff-whatever the economics may be, let alone the moral dimension-is to give back to those who pay taxes, and to the rich especially, as much as possible of their tax contributions.
The point is not to have a government that does something. The point is not to have a government.
Chait also argues that McCain is not a true Republican because he favors using the tax system to bring about a greater equality of incomes in this country. Growing inequality, as, for example, "Shadow Government" has long insisted, stifles the political process. It also violates the American dream.
But then Thomas Jefferson was--a Democrat.
McCain is also called a heretic, it should be noted, because of his long-standing and lonely support for genuine campaign funding reform. If the political system is for sale, and it is now, then those with money will certainly buy it, and they have. That bothers the Arizona senator.
Or consider his stand on abortion. Republican orthodoxy is simple: no abortion ever, for any reason. McCain is not simple: no abortion, except to save the mother's life and in cases of rape and incest. By GOP standards, that makes him almost pro-choice.
But it isn't the heresy here that fascinates me; it's the relative complexity. He's looked at the abortion issue in a human way and drawn a line, not built a wall, based on his perception of human needs. A man who thinks and feels. Not a record player.
Even clearer is his stand on fetal-tissue research, anathema in pro-life circles and even in most segments of the Clinton administration. McCain opposed such research, and then, as he says, a friend, Morris Udall, the Arizona Democrat, died from parkinsonism, for which fetal-tissue research is the best hope to find a cure. McCain looked at the case, and changed his mind.
Even worse, by New Republic standards, McCain has the temerity to imagine that the rich might conspire to keep themselves rich and the poor poor. McCain's advocacy for economic equality, Chait writes, brings an automatic reply of "class warfare" from orthodox Republicans. But horror of horrors, McCain's vision for America does not limit the idea of "class war" to the struggle of the poor to survive. The clear implication is that he sees the class struggle as something the rich might wage against us other folk. And that vision violates all kinds of Republican core beliefs.
McCain makes the GOP establishment nervous, Chait says, not so much because of his own campaign's chances, but because the reformist causes he represents are potentially quite popular.
I'm not ready to go there yet. John McCain may be the first Republican I'll ever vote for, but not because of the possibility he may fix the Republican Party. Frankly, that doesn't interest me.
Once upon a time, long ago and in a different world, I gave my heart to a political candidate who had the courage to look constantly at the world, the real world, and to keep love and human values at the head of his program.
That man was Robert F. Kennedy. In John McCain, I may see his true successor. ER