The McCain campaign has been pretty aggressive this week in pushing a new meme: John McCain has taken political risks by working with Dems on important issues, while Barack Obama hasn’t. I’m not sure if this is actually a vote-getter, but voters (and the media) seem to appreciate those willing to reach across the aisle to forge compromises, so I suppose the McCain campaign has had worse ideas.
There are, however, a few problems with the pitch. The first is the one Mitt Romney helped highlight on Thursday — Obama has worked with Republicans on important issues like counter-proliferation, energy policy, and ethics reform, and the only way to discount these efforts is to say those issues don’t matter. (Sen. Sam Brownback, who has worked with Obama on a variety of issues, inexplicably chose to pretend Obama’s cooperation simply never occurred.)
But the even bigger problem is that the McCain campaign is bringing up a subject that actually makes their guy look worse, not better.
On a McCain conference call this afternoon aimed at contrasting McCain’s bipartisan credentials with Obama’s, McCain spokeswoman Crystal Benton chose an example that also makes the opposite case.
“It’s fairly significant that Senator McCain worked on the immigration reform legislation while he was pursing the nomination of his party,” she said, adding that he “reached across the aisle despite a heated primary campaign.”
The campaign, of course, is only telling half the story. Yes, McCain, to his credit, took a risk working with Dems on a comprehensive immigration reform measure during the Republican primaries. His efforts failed — McCain couldn’t get his bill through the Senate, and his poll numbers tanked when GOP voters learned of his efforts.
But the notion that we should praise McCain now for his bipartisan efforts is demonstrably ridiculous when we consider that McCain actually rejects his own legislation.
McCain has said, over and over again, that he disapproves of his own legislation. He conceded in a nationally televised debate that he wouldn’t even vote for his own bill. McCain has reiterated his opposition to the compromise he personally struck throughout the presidential campaign.
So what on earth is the McCain campaign talking about? Asked for evidence of McCain’s bipartisanship, his team points to a bill that McCain doesn’t even support anymore.
“It’s fairly significant that Senator McCain worked on the immigration reform legislation while he was pursing the nomination of his party,” McCain’s spokesperson said. Yes, but it’s even more significant that McCain abandoned his own policy when it became politically inconvenient for him to stick to his principles.
Yesterday morning, the McCain campaign issued a memo that argued, “There has never been a time when Barack Obama has bucked the party line to lead on an issue of national importance.”
Now, on its face, it’s not at all clear why Obama needs to reject Democratic ideas to prove himself, but even if we’re willing to concede the basis of the question, I’d challenge the McCain campaign with two words: “You first.”
I can think of plenty of issues on which an earlier version of John McCain bucked the party line on issues of national importance, but that was before. Can his campaign name three issues on which McCain rejected GOP orthodoxy and didn’t change his mind afterwards?
I can’t. McCain bucked his party on taxes, but then reversed course and embraced the party line. He bucked his party on immigration, but then reversed course and embraced the party line. He bucked his party on a windfall-tax on oil company profits, but then reversed course and embraced the party line. The same goes for McCain on coastal drilling, the estate tax, indefinite detention of terrorist suspects, and on and on.
McCain wants to know when Obama has broken party ranks? I’d like to know when McCain has broken party ranks and then stuck to his guns.