Department of I Don't Get It (John McCain)

I never saw this eight-year-old piece by Michael J. Lynch until today, but I’d say Lynch has got John McCain’s number:

For John McCain, principle is fundamentally about honor—personal honor: about keeping his word, about doing what is right and doing it well. "Principle" combines honesty, stubbornness, and loyalty. This notion of principle is very different from adhering to a consistent political philosophy. … McCain's view of principle grows out of an aristocratic code of virtues, which in turn informs the ethics of the military, the institution within which McCain was born, raised, and spent much of his life working. The heart of the aristocratic code of ethics … is that one doesn't let people down. Obligations, in this view, are not owed to abstract systems of belief. They are specific, personal, owed to individuals or institutions: one's troops, the Senate, one's country. By this definition of principle, McCain's story shows him to be quite principled indeed.

I think this is wonderful (and kudos to any journalist whose work can bear rereading after this span of time). But it leaves open the question—why, exactly, do conservatives hate him so much?

I mean—I can see why the libertarians at Cato hate him (he’s not afraid of government power), but they are no more than a matchstick in the conservative forest fire. I can see why the oligarchs on K Street hate him (tobacco regulation and McCain-Feingold—and the fact that he is just too ornery). I guess I can see why a serious Christian moralist might have reservations about his free-wheeling horndog youth (which, refreshingly, he has never tried to conceal or explain away).

But none of this is enough to give a plausible explanation as to why the mass of conservative voters would turn their back on a guy with a near-impeccable conservative voting record in favor of Mr. I-used-to-be-more-liberal-than-Ted-Kennedy. One more proof that I don’t know squat about politics.

Fn.: conventional wisdom, says that McCain is embarrassed about his linkage to Charles Keating (link; cf. link). FWIW, I always figured McCain took a bum rap on that one. Seems to me that everything he did was well within the limits of the rules of the game, at least as they stood at the time.