Sen. McCain: Obama Talks the Talk, but...

Sen. John McCain appeared for a segment of the Hugh Hewitt show Wed. afternoon to discuss the state of the "stimulus" legislation. Frankly, I think Sen. McCain is doing himself proud as a responsible spokesman for sanity while President Hope-a-Dope blathers about "catastrophe". He is in the process of engaging in legislative wheeler-dealing in an effort to de-porkify what is clearly not a "stimulus" measure, but instead a "let's addict as much of America to government as possible" manifesto. In this regard, he mentioned specifically one amendment he offered to a Senate bill calling for a scaling back of the stimulus in the event of two consecutive quarters of positive GDP growth. Of course the amendment lost on a near party-line vote.

For the benefit of anyone who hasn't heard me hold forth on this topic, I would like to say that John McCain has never been my favorite politician - not by a long shot. I found him, as have many others, way too interested in cozying up to the national media. Moreover, I didn't think you could ever really be sure where he would come down on an issue, perhaps because he may not have known himself. I have sometimes questioned his effectiveness because it seemed that he was playing a different game than most of his fellow senators, and not out of high-mindedness, but rather, I've thought, out of naivete.

Nevertheless, I would also wish to say that in my opinion, John McCain is a great American, though not a great Republican, and not even a good Presidential candidate. Although I think he deserved to be President just for what he did in Viet Nam (I know that's ancient history), President Hope-a-Dope was mighty lucky to have the "opportunity" to run against him. In any case, I think it is clear that Sen. McCain has retained a good deal of credibility for the unquestioned character he has continued to exhibit, which may end up serving the nation very well in the next two years. He has not my admiration as a presidential candidate, but very much so as a leader capable of displaying character of the highest rank. This will be a commodity of high value given, as he noted when asked to assay the leadership abilities of our new President, that the President is great at talking the talk, but we still haven't seen him walk the walk. I think the budget/stimulus episode, quickly turning to a fiasco, is vindicating John McCain.