When McCain Was A Conservative …

He once believed in balancing the budget as well:

The American people did not support the goals of nation-building, peacemaking, law and order and certainly not warlord funding. For us to get into nation-building, law and order, etc, I think is a tragic and terrible mistake. But the argument that somehow the United States would suffer a loss to our prestige and our viability, as far as the No. 1 superpower in the world, I think, is baloney. The fact is, what can hurt our prestige, Mr. President, I’ll tell you what can hurt our viability, as the world’s superpower, and that is, if we enmesh ourselves in a drawn-out situation, which entails the loss of American lives, more debacles like the one we saw with the failed mission to capture Aidid’s lieutenants, using American forces, and that then will be what hurts our prestige."

That was 1993 with respect to Somalia. Different, of course. But not so different that conservatives now have to believe in an open-ended commitment to nation-buidling with the bulk of our entire active military in the middle of one of the most fractious non-states in the Arab Middle East. The McCain I believe in does not appear to be the McCain who is running in 2008.

Neocon-Realist-Blah

Fareed Zakaria considers McCain’s foreign policy proposals:

McCain has turned into a foreign-policy schizophrenic, alternating between neoconservative posturing and realist common sense. His speech reads like it was written by two very different people, each one given an allotment of a few paragraphs on every topic.

The neoconservative vision within the speech is essentially an affirmation of ideology. Not only does it declare war on Russia and China, it places the United States in active opposition to all nondemocracies. It proposes a League of Democracies, which would presumably play the role that the United Nations now does, except that all nondemocracies would be cast outside the pale. The approach lacks any strategic framework. What would be the gain from so alienating two great powers?

When you look at McCain’s fiscal proposals and his foreign policy vision, one begins to sense he actually doesn’t have a firm idea of where to go from here. It is three-quarters trying to give every faction in the GOP something to appease it and one-quarter winging it. Leadership? Nowhere I can see. And fellow journalists who have interviewed him recently report that he seems alternately confused, defensive and cranky. Even on the Wright stuff he seems to be on every side of the issue. I like the man, but I wonder if he isn’t running eight years’ too late. In a debate with Obama, he might come undone.

Quote For The Day

"If Hillary picks the person who saved her campaign then her press secretary will be Rush Limbaugh," – a NRO reader. I think Bill Kristol and Karl Rove will be close seconds. And Pat Buchanan not far behind. 

Isn’t it a relief, by the way, for the MSM to have a presidential campaign in which no issues are actually discussed? This Wright-stuff is amazing to me. It’s all the MSM seems to care about. Even coverage of McCain is now about his attitude toward an unhinged black pastor from Chicago. Hey: it beats discussing war, debt, the economy, torture, and terrorism. Because it enables America to return to the classic boomer racial-cultural wars that are all the MSM truly knows how to cover. There’s nothing to be done right now but to duck and cover. And emerge when actual questions of actual salience emerge.

Why I Don’t Go To Many Parties

Mark Kleiman:

Yesterday I went to a party at Robin Hanson’s.  Megan McArdle, Bryan Caplan, Will Wilkinson, Tyler and many others were in attendance, as was my 6-year old. 

"How was the party?," my wife asked the 6-year old.

"It was like this," he answered, "Blah, blah, blog.  My blog, blah, blah, blah.  Blog, blah, blog."

From the mouths of babes…