To add a few thoughts to Frank Stephenson's comments on the big McCain-Obama flap...

I've had minor contact with both the principles.

Obama and I were in Law School together - he was a year behind me.
Continued below the fold

It would be a mistake to say we knew one another - I vaguely recall meeting him once in a group, but I don't recall that we ever had a conversation. But I knew who he was. Obama was definitely a campus leader, and it was clear that his advice and judgement was highly valued by the campus's left wing activists. Since his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention last summer, Obama has been touted as a future star with the ability to reach across the aisle, and he has made at least some noises, as a Senator, that this is a role he would like to play. Now McCain rather tartly expresses his displeasure that Obama is unwilling to work on a bi-partisan lobby reform bill.

What is worth noting, however, is that there is really nothing in Obama's background (at least that I know of) to suggest that he will be a bipartisan coalition builder. Looking for clips about his career in the Illinois legislature, I find nothing to suggest that he was anything more than a doctrinaire liberal during his time there - smarter than most, more obviously a comer, but with a voting record and pattern that would, without exception, pretty much fit any liberal Democrat. Similarly, in the hotbed of minor league politics that was Harvard Law School, Obama was smart, good looking, articulate, and a leader on the left, but he did not reach across ideological divides. I don't recall him ever taking a position that was anything less than the standard liberal line; to my knowledge (which could be wrong) he had few if any close, or even casual, friends among the campus's conservatives. Despite his obvious gifts and brilliance, in his first year in the Senate, I've seen little to suggest that 3 years from now he will be considered anything more than another version of John Kerry (or pick your liberal Democratic senator).

As for John McCain, that he can get away with this letter is indicative of the free pass that the press gives him. Yes, such a snarky letter is fun to read, but is it really what our Senators ought to be writing, how they ought to be behaving? Is this really a man we want in the White House? And is there any doubt that if Bill Frist had sent someone such a letter, the press would be all over him?

Admittedly, I don't think much of Senator McCain. As a young man, in very trying circumstances, he sacrificed much, and showed much courage, in the service of his country. Sadly, his career since has not lived up to that promise. After returning from Vietnam, McCain divorced his wife (acknowledging the breakup was due to his infidelity) and married a wealthy young heiress. First elected to Congress in 1982, he did little of distinction for several years, and by 1990 was best known as a member of the "Keating 5," a group of 5 senators subjected to disciplinary action in the Senate for unethical behavior. In McCain's case, beyond the behavior for which he was brought before the Senate Ethics Committee, he accepted a number of trips on Keating's private jet to Keating's resort in the Bahamas.

After the Keating 5, McCain "found religion" as it were, becoming the ardent campaign finance reformer. He had opposed campaign finance "reform" previously, but embraced it as scandal protection in his 1992 re-election campaign. The rest, as they say, is history. But it has always been more of a "do as I say, not as I do" type of reform. Senator McCain's leadership PAC, Straight Talk America, is one of the largest, yet gives very little money to other candidates, preferring to spend it flying Senator McCain around the country, and paying "consultants." Then there is the "Reform Institute," which Senator McCain chairs and which some have called merely a sham McCain campaign front. Senator McCain has solicited some major bucks for the Reform Institute from people with business before his Senate committee. And I have noted publicly, on many occasions, that Senator McCain's power probably benefited from the substance of the McCain-Feingold reform bill more than that of any other politician, with the possible exceptions of George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton.

I've never had a conversation with Senator McCain - see below for my best efforts - but our paths have also crossed. Senator McCain has, on multiple occasions on national television, called me "corrupt," though without attempting to identify any "corrupt" behavior other than disagreements with him. (My wife tells me I'm the worst "corrupt" public official she's heard of: "Where are the fancy clothes, the vacations?" she asks). He has accused me of doing or saying things I have not, sometimes in such a way as to suggest that my behavior may have been illegal, and then repeated the allegations after public corrections were made by others (whether because he doesn't know or doesn't care, I don't know). He has always refused to meet with me. Finally, in 2004, I caught up with Senator McCain at a Senate hearing. When I approached and said, "Senator?" he instinctively took my hand, but when he saw it was me, he yanked his hand from mine (scroll to bottom for witness account), and proceeded to call me a "bully," a "coward," "corrupt," and someone with "no respect for the Constitution." He refused to allow me to speak at all.

Senator McCain's experience in Vietnam appears to have given him wisdom on that issue, a sense of judgement and proportionality. He has been willing to tell some veterans' groups things that they did not want to hear (to wit, that it is probably not true that American servicemen remain in captivity in North Vietnam); from his arrival in Congress, he has called for better relations with North Vietnam. But from his experience as a member of the Keating 5, he seems to have drawn all the wrong lessons. He has adopted foolish, unthinking "campaign finance reform" measures that he clearly does not understand; he has considered all opposition to his position to be personal and dishonorable, and has refused even to hear other views presented to him. He has engaged in regular name calling against those who disagree with him, not just me (for example, he has dubbed Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub "corrupt" and "an apparatchik" for failing to do his bidding at all times), even while he goes on the Tonight Show to preach political civility. He has been disingenuous - claiming to support a free, unregulated internet while supporting a lawsuit to regulate the internet.

Perhaps, to play amateur psychiatrist, the difference is that Senator McCain is confident that he behaved honorably in Vietnam, but not confident that he behaved honorably in the Keating 5 affair. If so, it is good that the Keating 5 affair was a wake-up call for him to be a better man, but it is unfortunate that he has so let it cloud his judgement, perspective, and personal relationships on questions of campaign finance and government ethics.

I see that Senators McCain and Obama have made up - which of these two talented, ambitious men benefits more from the photo op, I can't say. Perhaps there is some shrewdness in McCain's letter to Obama, appealing to Republican voters he will need in the 2008 primaries (I've noticed an instinctive dislike for Senator Obama in many Republicans - I do not share that dislike, but I've seen it in others). On the other hand, Senator McCain does have a vicious temper, and one often gets the sense that he needs a couple staffers with the guts to call him back and make him calm down. I am not thrilled at the thought of a man of Senator McCain's temperment and self-righteousness occupying the oval office, but there is a good chance that he will do so in 2009.