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 | Obama keeps returning to Reagan | |
| McCain is winning — in Israel | |
| Playbook: Obama's secret stop in Kuwait | |
| Obama in Afghanistan | |
| Phil Gramm resigns McCain post | |
| Pool Report From Obama Campaign | |
| Gramm Steps Down | |
| Horizons vs. Tables | |
| The DLC And Netroots Collide | |
| McCain Ad: "Troop Funding" |
| Weekly Radio Address | |
| The Pandering Candidates | |
| Obama's CEOs | |
| Ghosts of 1976 in Today's Campaign | |
| Humphrey Gave Greatest Convention Speech You've Never Heard |
| Obama's Remarks to La Raza | |
| Obama's Speech to LULAC | |
| What Americans Want in Immigration | |
| Don't Pop the Cork Yet | |
| Why I Support John McCain |
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July 19, 2008
The Pandering Candidates
By Jack KellyOpinion polls show a generic Democrat with a double digit lead over a generic Republican. So why is the race between Barack Obama and John McCain nearly tied? Sen. McCain's speech Monday to a left wing Hispanic group, and Sen. Obama's speech on Iraq Tuesday provide clues.
Sen. McCain's presidential ambitions suffered a near death experience last year when he sponsored with Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) a "comprehensive" immigration reform bill that (allegedly) combined stricter control of U.S. borders with a path to citizenship for most of the roughly 12 million illegals already here.
That bill faltered after a massive outburst of indignation from the American people. Joining the roughly one third of Americans who oppose any form of amnesty were another third who were outraged that the amnesty provisions in McCain-Kennedy were immediate, but border control measures were weak. Senators and Congressmen were deluged with angry emails and telephone calls.
The unprecedented outburst indicated Americans don't trust Congress to do the right thing, a chastened Sen. McCain said then. Border security must come first. But he never renounced his support for a comprehensive approach which would include a guest worker program, and a path to citizenship for otherwise law abiding illegals already here.
When Sen. McCain agreed to speak to the National Council of La Raza, old wounds were reopened. Vitriol about "Juan McCain" and "McAmnesty" spewed from Web sites such as Free Republic and Hot Air.
In his speech, Sen. McCain reiterated his support for a comprehensive approach to immigration reform. He declared it would be his "top priority." Conservative critics said he was pandering. But he did the opposite of that.
A La Raza activist, Enrique Morones, demanded Sen. McCain renounce the "militarization" of our borders. This is how Sen. McCain, his voice rising, responded:
"The United States of America has to have secure borders, sir, and I will do that. And that's necessary even if you disagree."
Sen. McCain also refused to pledge to address border security and amnesty in a single bill, as he'd attempted before. "First, we have to assure the American people the borders are secure," he said.
To pander, you tell an audience what it wants to hear. Sen. McCain told La Raza what it needed to hear. To see pandering in action, you had to have seen Sen. Obama's appearance before La Raza the day before. Sen. Obama said communities were being "terrorized by ICE immigration raids." He heaped praise on Mr. Morones, the activist Sen. McCain confronted.
Sen. McCain would not be deterred by the threat of defections from the right from reaching out to La Raza and other Hispanic groups. And he wouldn't water down his commitment to border security in his appearances before those groups. Whether you agree with Sen. McCain's views on immigration or not, he has been consistent and courageous in expressing them.
"Consistent" and "courageous" are adjectives that haven't often been applied to Sen. Obama, especially in recent weeks. His foreign policy speech in Washington Tuesday suggests why.
The most remarkable thing about Sen. Obama's speech was the timing of it. He set forth his policy on Iraq on the eve of his visit there, rather than afterwards. As Sen. McCain noted: "In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around. First you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy."
The speech earned Sen. Obama a rebuke from the normally Democrat-friendly editors at the Washington Post:
"After hinting earlier this month that he might 'refine' his Iraq strategy after visiting the country and listening to commanders, Mr. Obama appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq," the Post said in an editorial Wednesday.
Sen. Obama evidently backtracked on the backtrack he was planning for fear of offending liberals already upset by the "refinements" of his positions on other issues. But he angered Democrats with a grip on reality, such as Michael O'Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution.
"To say you're going to get out on a certain schedule -- regardless of what the Iraqis do, regardless of what our enemies do, regardless of what is happening on the ground -- is the height of absurdity," Mr. O'Hanlon said.
