I’ve resisted the temptation to turn bashing Joe Klein, blogging at Time’s Swampland blog, into a parlor game, but one of his items from today was just too breathtaking to ignore.
McCain, whether you agree with him or not, has been entirely consistent about the war. I disagreed with him about going to war in 2003, agreed with him about the need for more troops until last summer, when it became plain that we had no reliable ally in Iraq, and I disagree with him now. We’re well past the point where a minimal, exhausted U.S. military force can bring stability, by itself, to Iraq. I admire McCain’s honorable willingness to take this unpopular position into the 2008 election…which makes it even more disappointing when the Senator slides into political calculation, as he does when he challenges those who oppose the escalation to cut off funding for the war.
There’s some subtle, understated criticism of McCain in there, but to insist that McCain “has been entirely consistent about the war” is simply false. It’s likely that Klein has steered clear of the many resources documenting McCain’s many inconsistencies on the war, and Klein offered a categorical statement without getting the facts to back up the assertion. That’s a shame, because the opposite of Klein’s observation is correct.
Faiz noted some of my favorite McCain inconsistencies on the war, including the senator’s flip-flops on the size of the escalation, the difficulty of the mission, the degree to which he’s challenged the administration’s policy, his openness to redeployment, his commitment to Iraqi benchmarks, and the speed with which we can judge the escalation.
If this is “complete consistency,” what would a wavering, calculating flip-flopper look like? As Greg Sargent put it, “McCain has blatantly contradicted himself and has shown himself to be capable of political opportunism of the rankest sort. Is there no inconsistency or self-contradiction glaring enough to get pundits to stop presuming consistency and integrity on McCain’s part?”
I’ve been wondering the same thing for years.
Post Script: And as long as we’re on the subject of Swampland, I found this kind of language typical of the punditocracy, which tends to embrace conservative themes as the conventional wisdom.
On the February 2 edition of MSNBC News Live, during a conversation with host Joe Scarborough about congressional opposition to an Iraq troop increase, Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox asserted that it is “strange” that “[i]t’s Democrats that are really representing the mainstream American values right now, which is a strong disapproval for the surge.”
I’m delighted that Cox recognizes the Democrats as the mainstream party that represents typical American values, but why on earth does that have to be characterized as “strange”?