Soccer Dad

The real mccain

via memeorandum

Slate recently ran reprint of part of a NYT magazine profile of Sen. McCain written by Michael Lewis, The great McCain story you've probably forgotten. It tells of the Senator's devotion to one of his political patrons: liberal Democratic Congressman, Mo Udall.

A nurse entered and seemed surprised to find anyone there, and it wasn't long before I found out why: Almost no one visits anymore. In his time, which was not very long ago, Mo Udall was one of the most-sought-after men in the Democratic Party. Yet as he dies in a veterans hospital a few miles from the Capitol, he is visited regularly only by a single old political friend, John McCain. "He's not going to wake up this time," McCain said.

On the way out of the parking lot, McCain recalled what it was like to be a nobody called upon by a somebody. As he did, his voice acquired the same warmth that colored Russell Feingold's speech when he described the first call from John McCain. "When you called Feingold … " I started to ask him. But before I could, he interrupted. "Yeah," he says, "I thought of Mo." And then, for maybe the third time that morning, McCain spoke of how it affected him when Udall took him in hand. It was a simple act of affection and admiration, and for that reason it meant all the more to McCain. It was one man saying to another, We disagree in politics but not in life.

Read the whole thing.

Or if you prefer read the whole original.

While I think that Sen. McCain's obsession with money in politics and his effort to address it are wrongheaded, the idea that a politician in power would reach out to one out of power to address an issue that they agreed on, is something that is rather uncommon these days.

For all the talk about Obama's "new style" of politics such as David Brooks's observation here:

Clinton had sounded like a traditional executive, as someone who gathers the experts, forges a policy, fights the opposition, bears the burdens of power, negotiates the deal and, in crisis, makes the decision at 3 o’clock in the morning.

But Obama sounded like a cross between a social activist and a flannel-shirted software C.E.O. — as a nonhierarchical, collaborative leader who can inspire autonomous individuals to cooperate for the sake of common concerns.

Clinton had sounded like Old Politics, but Obama created a vision of New Politics. And the past several months have revolved around the choice he framed there that night. Some people are enthralled by the New Politics, and we see their vapors every day. Others think it is a mirage and a delusion. There’s only one politics, and, tragically, it’s the old kind, filled with conflict and bad choices.

Sen. Obama doesn't represent much new about politics. As Wolf Howling and Big Lizards have pointed out, Sen. Obama hasn't had to work up a sweat in any earlier elections as his opponents have found themselves outmaneuvered legally before the races even started. Sen. Clinton has been mocked for expecting a coronation, but she did run a real race in 2000. Sen. Obama's managed to eliminate his competition before a race has been necessary.

And his hardball politics contrasts with Sen. McCain who showed undying respect for a mentor and who helped shape Sen. Feingold's career. With McCain, the personal supersedes the political. With Sen. Obama, despite the soaring, uplifting rhetoric, everything is politics. Granted he views his politics as an engine of change; but the poltics to effect that change is as base as old politics that it's supposed to transcend. As Bookworm Room has shown, the Obama of the rhetoric is not the Obama of the flesh.

Either read the short Michael Lewis or the long one, but get a sense of Sen. McCain. Unlike either of his possible opponents this fall, whatever his faults, Sen. McCain is real.

john mccain.