McCain Offers Voters Contradictions, Conundrums: Albert R. Hunt

Commentary by Albert R. Hunt

Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Republicans are gathering in St. Paul, Minnesota, this week to nominate their greatest hero since Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the least-popular nominee with the party faithful since well before Ike.

There is little about John Sidney McCain III that is conventional, so why should this convention be any different?

McCain has performed brave acts as a U.S. Navy pilot, prisoner of war and legislative risk-taker that the current president and even the hero of modern Republicanism, Ronald Reagan, just talked about.

Yet his party's conservative base despises the Arizona Republican for offenses ranging from championing campaign- finance reform to his fight against George W. Bush for the presidential nomination eight years ago -- it was the Bush forces that did the sleazy stuff -- to his penchant for forming alliances with Democrats.

Unlike most politicians, he can't be easily categorized. ``There is no question that John has a deeper commitment to service and to a cause greater than any particular ideology,'' says New Hampshire Republican Senator John Sununu.

McCain's selection of the inexperienced Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, which stunned many politicians, reaffirms his maverick image. It was also impulsive: He'd only met her once, briefly, before last week. Most of his advisers wanted him to pick someone more seasoned as his running mate.

With McCain, contradictions abound. He has a lengthy conservative voting record in Congress; his literary hero is Robert Jordan, the American leftist-sympathizer in Ernest Hemingway's ``For Whom The Bell Tolls,'' who died while fighting Spanish fascists. He often cites Reagan, though his political hero is President Teddy Roosevelt, a big-government activist.

Shared Sacrifice

He speaks passionately and sincerely about shared sacrifice, drawing on the generations of service his family has given America. And then he just as passionately supports a costly war and asks no sacrifice of the wealthy.

He, far more than Bush, is a genuine internationalist who has traveled widely and is intimately familiar with major players in the world scene. Yet he is given to careless asides -- declaring ``we are all Georgians'' after the Russian invasion a few weeks ago.

There is a side that is touchingly tender. He spent countless hours in a hospital room with a dying and comatose Morris K. Udall, the former Arizona Democratic congressman. He comforted the family of the late David Ifshin, a close friend who as an antiwar demonstrator protested in Hanoi while McCain was nearby in a prison. McCain family affairs in Sedona, Arizona, are the Western version of the Kennedy family on Cape Cod.

Fiery Temper

Yet he has a volatile temper that some congressional colleagues, including Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, say make him unfit for president. He has been known to lash out at his own wife.

There is no one in American political life more courageous -- he was a recipient of the John F. Kennedy Library's Profile in Courage award several years ago -- or who reacts more admirably to adversity.

He was brutally tortured by the North Vietnamese for 5 1/2 years. Still, he led the effort to normalize relations with that country decades later, providing cover for President Bill Clinton, a draft evader during that war.

He foolishly cavorted with savings-and-loan crook, Charles Keating; later he led almost every campaign-finance and ethics measure in the Senate.

Left for Dead

Of course, he was written off as politically dead as recently as last fall and bounced back to capture the nomination.

What does all this suggest about what sort of president McCain would be? The contradictions and conundrums continue.

The maverick independent has made political concessions over the past year. He believes that Bush's guru, Karl Rove, who orchestrated the personal attacks on McCain in the 2000 Republican presidential primary, lacks character. Today his campaign is staffed with Rove acolytes.

A major uncertainty would be economic policy. McCain has never bought into the supply-side school, which argues that tax reductions solve every problem. His espousal of huge tax cuts, principally for the wealthy, in this campaign is more of a political calculation than a personal conviction.

As a naval officer, politician and the son and grandson of admirals, honor and duty are deeply ingrained in McCain; the notion of getting fabulously rich or being paid 500-fold more than the average worker is not.

Populist

There is a gut populism in the Republican nominee. He saw Bush in 2000 and Mitt Romney in 2008 as men of unearned privilege.

It isn't clear how this would be resolved in a McCain administration. He really has little interest in matters economic, so appointments would be crucial. Some of his top economic advisers like Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Kevin Hassett (a Bloomberg columnist) are sensible conservatives who would adjust to changing economic or political realities.

If, however, he taps as Treasury secretary former Senator Phil Gramm -- who in July condescendingly dismissed economically strapped Americans as ``whiners'' -- economic policy will have a hard edge.

On foreign policy, he's a fervent believer in the Iraq mission, yet this Vietnam veteran also knows that a democracy can't wage war when it lacks popular support. My hunch is he would look for a faster exit strategy in his first year.

Appointments Matter

Appointments will matter a great deal in any McCain presidency; loyalty will be a byword. He wears his emotions up front and has a strong sense of who is properly motivated and who is not.

He'll always be resilient. Sununu recalls standing on the Senate floor with him in mid-July 2007 when his campaign was in tatters, running well behind Rudy Giuliani and Romney and even Fred Thompson in the polls.

``John was as confident as I've ever seen him,'' the lawmaker remembers. ``John is at his best when they say there's something he can't accomplish.''

(Albert R. Hunt is the executive editor for Washington at Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Albert R. Hunt in Washington at ahunt1@bloomberg.net