Seshmeister
05-17-2004, 10:08 AM
Sunday Times
The past week has been an emotional whiplash for Americans. The shame of Abu Ghraib morphed into the shock at the beheading of Nick Berg. America seemed too powerful and then not powerful enough. And by the end of it, a kind of psychic equilibrium could be felt.
No serious figure wants to cut and run in Iraq, however chastened and troubled Washington has become. And no serious neo-conservative or liberal interventionist has avoided what is in Washington a rare event: a bout of public self-doubt.
What emerges is something of a consensus: President Bush has a few months to persuade the country that Iraq is on the right path. If he fails, John Kerry will have a chance to offer himself as the “smarter war, kinder peace” candidate. In this endeavour, Kerry needs some measure of hawkish credibility. And he needs someone who can ease polarisation and bring independents into the Democratic tent.
One man can. Republican Senator John McCain is everyone’s dream candidate, especially the Washington press corps’. He’s a charismatic Republican, tough on defence but alienated by George W Bush and the Republican party’s fundamentalist Christian base.
Last week, Kerry mentioned him as a possible future defence secretary. But true dreamers are looking for something more radical: a Kerry-McCain bipartisan ticket. It’s still highly unlikely, but recent events make it far less so.
Here’s why. There is nobody better suited in the country to tackle a difficult war where the United States is credibly accused of abusing prisoners than John McCain. He was, after all, a war hero and then a victim of the worst kind of prisoner torture imaginable in the Hanoi Hilton.
His military credentials are impeccable but so are his moral scruples and backbone: that’s a rare combination. As vice-presidential candidate, he would give the Kerry campaign the ability to criticise the conduct of this war of liberation, but also to pursue it credibly.
He would remove the taint of an “anti-war” candidacy headed by a man who once helped pioneer the anti-war forces in Vietnam, while giving the Kerry campaign credibility on national defence. He would ensure that a Kerry victory would not be interpreted by America’s allies or enemies as a decision to cut and run.
In office, McCain could be given real authority as a war manager, providing a counterweight to Kerry’s penchant for UN-style non-solutions. There’s a precedent for such a powerful vice-president who could not credibly be believed to have ambitions on the Oval Office himself: Dick Cheney.
Why no credible ambitions for the presidency himself? If McCain agreed to run with Kerry, he would also have to agree to support Kerry for possible re-election. There’s no way that McCain, now aged 67, could credibly run for president in eight years’ time — as a Democrat or as a Republican.
So he could become for Kerry what Cheney has been for Bush: a confidant, a manager, a strategic mind, a guide through the thicket of war management.
But he could also be more for Kerry. He could be a unifying force in the country in the dark days ahead. Domestically, a Kerry-McCain ticket would go a long way towards healing the Vietnam wound, now rubbed raw again by recent events in Iraq.
The two men represent very different responses to that war, and could help unite their generation — finally! — over it. To have two combat veterans up against Bush and Cheney would also eviscerate Republican attempts to paint Kerry as weak on defence and in the war on terror.
Besides, McCain represents a real and utterly unrepresented constituency in America: the fiscally conservative, socially tolerant hawks, usually described as “independents”.
By bringing these people into the Democratic big tent, Kerry could not only win the election, but help position the Democrats to regain majority status. It would be, for the Democrats, a strategic coup de main.
McCain, of course, is a Republican. But he has worked with many Democrats, including Kerry, and has been systematically excluded by the increasingly fundamentalist caste of the Republican establishment.
On domestic issues, such as campaign finance reform, corporate scandals, and the deficit, he might actually be more comfortable in conservative Democratic ranks.
He is pro-life, which makes him anathema to Democrats. But this year, with Kerry under fire from the Catholic hierarchy on the abortion question, picking McCain would enable the Democratic candidate to insist that there is real diversity within his own party, and that he respects those who disagree with him on abortion.
His policy would remain the same, but he could go a long way to reversing the unfortunate litmus test among Democrats and Republicans that abortion has become.
Would McCain agree? The one sticking point has been his loyalty to his party. That counts for something. But Americans are now in a national crisis of confidence in the middle of a crucial war.
The next president, whoever he is, may well have to encounter seismic shocks from new terrorist atrocities in America and the world.
Under those circumstances, America cannot afford more polarisation, partisan division and acrimony. In parliamentary democracies, such crises sometimes provoke the formation of a “national government” in which both parties agree to serve in a national unity government. The American tradition demands otherwise.
But the need to heal divisions and yet fight on in Iraq and around the world might lead to a version of the national government in the shape of a unity ticket.
McCain could say that this national crisis demands that he put country ahead of party and serve. His loyalty to his party would therefore be trumped by loyalty to his country.
Kerry could also say that his impulse is to be a “uniter, not a divider”, and that, unlike George W Bush, he will actually show it in his pick for the vice-presidency.
Their platform? Winning the war, cutting the deficit, reforming corporate excess. A Kerry-McCain ticket, regardless of the many difficulties, would, I think, win in a landslide.
Will it happen? Still unlikely. But the odds just shortened. And if Bush keeps stumbling, the arguments for such a dramatic innovation could get a lot stronger
The past week has been an emotional whiplash for Americans. The shame of Abu Ghraib morphed into the shock at the beheading of Nick Berg. America seemed too powerful and then not powerful enough. And by the end of it, a kind of psychic equilibrium could be felt.
No serious figure wants to cut and run in Iraq, however chastened and troubled Washington has become. And no serious neo-conservative or liberal interventionist has avoided what is in Washington a rare event: a bout of public self-doubt.
What emerges is something of a consensus: President Bush has a few months to persuade the country that Iraq is on the right path. If he fails, John Kerry will have a chance to offer himself as the “smarter war, kinder peace” candidate. In this endeavour, Kerry needs some measure of hawkish credibility. And he needs someone who can ease polarisation and bring independents into the Democratic tent.
One man can. Republican Senator John McCain is everyone’s dream candidate, especially the Washington press corps’. He’s a charismatic Republican, tough on defence but alienated by George W Bush and the Republican party’s fundamentalist Christian base.
Last week, Kerry mentioned him as a possible future defence secretary. But true dreamers are looking for something more radical: a Kerry-McCain bipartisan ticket. It’s still highly unlikely, but recent events make it far less so.
Here’s why. There is nobody better suited in the country to tackle a difficult war where the United States is credibly accused of abusing prisoners than John McCain. He was, after all, a war hero and then a victim of the worst kind of prisoner torture imaginable in the Hanoi Hilton.
His military credentials are impeccable but so are his moral scruples and backbone: that’s a rare combination. As vice-presidential candidate, he would give the Kerry campaign the ability to criticise the conduct of this war of liberation, but also to pursue it credibly.
He would remove the taint of an “anti-war” candidacy headed by a man who once helped pioneer the anti-war forces in Vietnam, while giving the Kerry campaign credibility on national defence. He would ensure that a Kerry victory would not be interpreted by America’s allies or enemies as a decision to cut and run.
In office, McCain could be given real authority as a war manager, providing a counterweight to Kerry’s penchant for UN-style non-solutions. There’s a precedent for such a powerful vice-president who could not credibly be believed to have ambitions on the Oval Office himself: Dick Cheney.
Why no credible ambitions for the presidency himself? If McCain agreed to run with Kerry, he would also have to agree to support Kerry for possible re-election. There’s no way that McCain, now aged 67, could credibly run for president in eight years’ time — as a Democrat or as a Republican.
So he could become for Kerry what Cheney has been for Bush: a confidant, a manager, a strategic mind, a guide through the thicket of war management.
But he could also be more for Kerry. He could be a unifying force in the country in the dark days ahead. Domestically, a Kerry-McCain ticket would go a long way towards healing the Vietnam wound, now rubbed raw again by recent events in Iraq.
The two men represent very different responses to that war, and could help unite their generation — finally! — over it. To have two combat veterans up against Bush and Cheney would also eviscerate Republican attempts to paint Kerry as weak on defence and in the war on terror.
Besides, McCain represents a real and utterly unrepresented constituency in America: the fiscally conservative, socially tolerant hawks, usually described as “independents”.
By bringing these people into the Democratic big tent, Kerry could not only win the election, but help position the Democrats to regain majority status. It would be, for the Democrats, a strategic coup de main.
McCain, of course, is a Republican. But he has worked with many Democrats, including Kerry, and has been systematically excluded by the increasingly fundamentalist caste of the Republican establishment.
On domestic issues, such as campaign finance reform, corporate scandals, and the deficit, he might actually be more comfortable in conservative Democratic ranks.
He is pro-life, which makes him anathema to Democrats. But this year, with Kerry under fire from the Catholic hierarchy on the abortion question, picking McCain would enable the Democratic candidate to insist that there is real diversity within his own party, and that he respects those who disagree with him on abortion.
His policy would remain the same, but he could go a long way to reversing the unfortunate litmus test among Democrats and Republicans that abortion has become.
Would McCain agree? The one sticking point has been his loyalty to his party. That counts for something. But Americans are now in a national crisis of confidence in the middle of a crucial war.
The next president, whoever he is, may well have to encounter seismic shocks from new terrorist atrocities in America and the world.
Under those circumstances, America cannot afford more polarisation, partisan division and acrimony. In parliamentary democracies, such crises sometimes provoke the formation of a “national government” in which both parties agree to serve in a national unity government. The American tradition demands otherwise.
But the need to heal divisions and yet fight on in Iraq and around the world might lead to a version of the national government in the shape of a unity ticket.
McCain could say that this national crisis demands that he put country ahead of party and serve. His loyalty to his party would therefore be trumped by loyalty to his country.
Kerry could also say that his impulse is to be a “uniter, not a divider”, and that, unlike George W Bush, he will actually show it in his pick for the vice-presidency.
Their platform? Winning the war, cutting the deficit, reforming corporate excess. A Kerry-McCain ticket, regardless of the many difficulties, would, I think, win in a landslide.
Will it happen? Still unlikely. But the odds just shortened. And if Bush keeps stumbling, the arguments for such a dramatic innovation could get a lot stronger