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McCain showed city a rested side soon to vanish
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Published: May 11, 2008
While Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were hoarsely making their last-ditch pitches for votes Tuesday in the Democratic primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, Sen. John McCain of Arizona was calmly speaking at Wake Forest University.
While Obama and Clinton were looking just a cut above having been run over by some campaign bus, McCain stood in Wait Chapel looking rested and younger than his 71 years. While Obama and Clinton lobbed final sound bites against each other on the day of the primary elections and struggled to meet schedules, McCain showed up on time and talked for about a half hour on one subject, the importance of judicial restraint -- which boils down to appointing conservative judges and not liberal ones. While Obama and Clinton tried to appeal to the broadest number of voters, McCain focused on shedding his "maverick" image and appealing to conservatives, many of whom have questioned his conservative credentials.
Such is the luxury that McCain has had of being the presumptive Republican nominee for the presidency, having dispensed with the last of his opponents months ago. As has been often noted, McCain has been able to sit back and watch as Obama and Clinton bloody each other.
That will soon change. McCain, whose courage as a POW during the Vietnam War should never be questioned, learned some lessons about political fighting in the mean Republican primary campaign of 2000, when he lost out to George W. Bush. He'll probably apply some of those lessons when he takes on the Democratic nominee, whether it's Obama, who scored a decisive win in our state Tuesday, or Clinton, who won a narrow victory in Indiana.
Tuesday at Wake Forest, McCain was still in his above-the-fray mode, and clearly loving it. He was all smiles, happy to be in a state that he stands a good chancing of winning in November, and there was no sign of his legendary temper. He stood up on the stage in front of nine big American flags. Seated behind him were Winston-Salem's own Sen. Richard Burr and his wife, Brooke; McCain's wife, Cindy; former Solicitor General Ted Olson; and former Sen. Fred Thompson. The crowd, in keeping with its speaker, was enthusiastic, but subdued.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. We are about to begin," a speaker said, as if starting a class.
McCain loosened up the crowd by joking with students over whether they were studying or "watching one of Fred's (Thompson's) old movies." He, perhaps unintentionally, echoed President Bush on another joke. "A few bad grades don't have to be the end of the world," McCain told students. "I'm living proof that an undistinguished academic record can be overcome."
Getting down to business, McCain criticized Supreme Court decisions that have allowed government agencies to take property for private development and have barred capital punishment for murderers who were under 18 when they killed. He didn't mention abortion, but the kinds of judges he praised might well be prone to one day overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.
McCain, who is not a lawyer, politely nipped at Obama and Clinton, who are lawyers, for favoring what he calls "activist" judges. "Apparently nobody quite fits the bill except for an elite group of activist judges, lawyers and law professors who think they know wisdom when they see it -- and they see it only in each other," McCain said.
Obama and Clinton don't seem to mind, he said, "when fundamental questions of social policy are pre-emptively decided by judges instead of by the people and their elected representatives."
McCain praised Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both appointed by Bush, and made it clear that they are the kind of judges he'd nominate. He lashed out at Obama for what McCain saw as unfair criticism of Roberts during his confirmation process.
McCain also made a sort of backhanded defense of his participation in the "Gang of 14," the bipartisan group in the Senate that in 2005 rightly stopped a showdown over Bush's judicial nominations. Many conservatives denounced McCain for participating in that effort. But McCain, while joking that he never liked the title of their group, said its work led to the confirmation of some good judges.
"And it showed that serious business can be handled in a serious way, without allowing Senate business to unravel in a chaos of partisan anger," he said.
If only that were true for all politics. But McCain knows all too well that's not the case. Soon, he'll be showing the country just what he learned from his loss in the 2000 Republican presidential primary.
Words that McCain spoke at Wake Forest a couple of years after that loss may have a whole new meaning come November, whoever wins.
"Speaking from experience, failing stinks," McCain told the graduating class in 2002. "Just don't stop there. Don't be undone by that. Move on. Failure is no more a permanent condition than success. It's courage that counts."
■ John Railey writes local editorials for the Journal. He can be reached at
jrailey@wsjournal.com
.
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