The Good Soldier

Presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain certainly is a man of honor. But is he a man of principle?

Michael W. Lynch from the January 1999 issue

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Although the Senate eventually cleared McCain, the appearance that he sold his high office called his honor into question, an indelible stain on an otherwise perfect record of public service. "Here is a man whose family --father, grandfather and himself--were real patriots, and he was accused of being a sleaze," former New Hampshire Sen. Warren Rudman told National Journal in 1997. "He told me that from his point of view it was worse than being in Vietnam and in prison."

For McCain, campaign finance reform is therefore imperative. By working to reform the supposedly "corrupt" system, he implicitly transfers blame for his Keating connection. If the First Amendment takes a beating, so be it. From a politically principled viewpoint, that sounds selfish, even dishonorable. But that isn't how McCain sees the matter: If the system could make even him look sleazy, he seems to reason, there is something wrong with the system.

Republicans have plenty of recent experience with honorable presidential candidates who operate on aristocratic virtues. Think Bob Dole, the man McCain most admires as a senator, and George Bush, who never mastered that "vision thing."

"Bush and Dole were civil servants in the most distinguished sense of the word--admirable men. The same can be said of McCain," says Rahe, the University of Tulsa historian. But they "can't project a vision or provide leadership except in a crisis." Such men do not achieve high office to change the world but rather to fulfill a combination of ambition and duty. In McCain, America would get an auditor-in-chief. "We could do a lot worse," says Rahe. "But we could do a lot better."

Political scientist John J. Pitney Jr., a professor at Claremont McKenna College and a REASON contributing editor, agrees. "On the personal level he has the capacity to inspire trust, which we have seen [during Clinton's scandals] is important," says Pitney. "But there's more to leadership than that. Leaders have to have a clear sense of direction. And that's the question for John McCain: Does he have a clear sense of direction?"

He certainly doesn't articulate a vision, although he seems to know it's important to have one. "There's no country that has been this powerful since the Roman Empire," McCain responds, when I asked him what he would like to accomplish as president. "If you accept that fact, then the leader of the world's most powerful nation can be an incredible force for good, both within the boundaries of the United States and without."

Outside the nation's borders, McCain would focus on "democracy, freedom, stability, economic growth, and peace." His biggest criticism of the Clinton administration, with which he's often cooperated, is "they have no conceptual framework of what they want the world to look like in the next century." True enough--except that McCain, too, lacks such a framework.

When the Standard's Ferguson tried to nail him down on his vision, McCain replied: "The first thing I'd do is convene the best minds I know of in the field of foreign policy....I'd say, `Look, let's figure out where we are, where we need to go, and what our conceptual framework is. Let's work out a cohesive foreign policy.' I'm sure that those people, with their collective brilliance and a lot of experience, could come up with a very cohesive foreign policy."

Relying on experts "goes well with a military background," says Rahe. "The Navy and Air Force see the world as engineers, a series of technical problems that need to be fixed." McCain, who repeatedly calls on the authority of experts to justify his positions on issues ranging from foreign policy to tobacco, fits this pattern well. So well, in fact, that Ferguson called him "a thinking man's Perot."

McCain's vision isn't much clearer on domestic policy. In many ways, he's a typical Republican. He knows what he's against--government waste, special interests, and unfiltered, er, any cigarettes--but just can't come up with a compelling list of what he's for. Sure, he supports the obvious in the information age of the kid: technology and children. "[We need to] help every American to be part of this incredible economic revolution taking place in the form of information and technology, which for the first time could provide every child in America with an equal opportunity," he says.

Again employing Perot-style technocratic language, McCain talks of the need for government to support "programs that have proven successful," as well as "encouraging private industry and private enterprise." When asked for examples of successful government programs, McCain comes up with Head Start and the Women, Infants, and Children welfare program.

It's not that McCain doesn't ring the right libertarian policy bells. He just rings them cautiously. "Among" the solutions for America's K-12 educational malaise, according to McCain, are "vouchers and charter schools." On Social Security reform, perhaps the most significant policy issue likely to face the Senate this year, McCain is "pleased that the majority of the American people are now saying that privatization or some kind of privatization should be part of the debate." On tax reform, he "favors the flat tax" and setting a "cutoff date for the IRS code."

On encryption, however, he's "in a terrible quandary," since the national security establishment opposes strong privacy protections. Says McCain: "I'm not about to take a position which the people to whom we entrust our national security say would endanger us." If not you, Mr. War Hero, then who?

In fact, McCain is downright hostile to the unaristocratic notion that individuals have a fundamental right to pursue happiness as they see fit as long as they do not hurt other people. "The guy's a busybody," says the Cato Institute's Ed Crane. "He just wants to butt into everyone else's business."

The senator is an avid drug warrior who opposed Arizona's medical marijuana initiative. "It's a misguided proposal," says McCain. "We are opening the door to the abuse of all kinds of illegal drugs." He is the chief sponsor of a Senate bill that would require schools and libraries to install Internet filters. "Pornography and child pornography," he says, "are serious problems." And McCain has devoted serious time to ensuring that ultimate fighting--a free-form, unscripted combination of martial arts and pro wrestling--is effectively banned in much of the country. "There are lots of things we prevent consenting adults from doing," he said on Larry King Live.

In the end, it looks likely that McCain's maverick sense of virtue will keep him from any serious run for the presidency. Although his bravery and charisma might serve him well in a general election, GOP primary voters care about political consistency. The party's traditionalist and libertarian wings may bitterly oppose each other, but they both profess a definition of principle that is bourgeois, impersonal, and quite foreign to McCain. It is not enough to be honest, stubborn, and loyal.

"In this country we have two parties," says the ACU's David Keene. "One of them is the pro-government party; one of them is the anti-government party. If you are going to be a leader in the anti-government party, you can't be seen as pro-government every step of the way."