Federal Judiciary

The Mac Is Back, Again -- By: Robert Costa

The day after Valentine?s Day, Evan Bayh, Indiana?s weary Democratic prince, broke up with the U.S. Senate. ?There are better ways to serve my fellow citizens,? Bayh sighed. ?I do not love Congress.? Bayh isn?t the only Democrat getting cold feet at the reelection altar. In recent months, two other Democratic senators, Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, announced their own premature retirements. ?And there might be more coming,? says Sen. John McCain, Arizona?s longtime GOP senator, in a conversation with National Review Online.

McCain himself won?t be joining them. Rather than retreat to the red rocks of northern Arizona, ?where the cell-phone reception is worse than in Baghdad,? McCain, at 73 years old, is doing everything he can -- scrambling, really -- to persuade Arizonans to elect him to a fifth consecutive term. Standing in his way is J. D. Hayworth, a former Republican congressman and radio talker. Hayworth announced his primary bid the same day Bayh bid goodbye. Even after two presidential campaigns and 23-plus years in the upper chamber -- and despite Rasmussen?s latest poll, which has him topping Hayworth by 22 points -- McCain tells us that he?s taking Hayworth?s challenge seriously (he?s already spent $2.5 million on his campaign). He doesn?t, however, buy into the growing media narrative that the race is a case of ?moderate versus outsider.? Instead, McCain sees his primary campaign as ?maverick conservative versus pork-barrel spender.?

?When the tea partiers take a close look at Mr. Hayworth?s record and see all of his earmarks and all of his ties to Jack Abramoff, they?ll find a record that demands scrutiny,? McCain says. ?We have the letters and legislative records to prove it. And we will. At the same time, I?m proud of my record as a conservative and for taking on my party on spending and earmarks. When tea partiers examine my fiscal record, they?ll find a friend. We may have disagreement on some issues, but I?m confident that we will get significant support.? McCain adds that the tea-party movement is ?part of a groundswell of frustration? with which he identifies. ?A majority of Americans are angry about their economic situation and the failure of Congress and the president to act on their behalf. I want to keep fighting for their interests,? he says.

McCain also frowns on Hayworth?s getting mired in the debate over President Obama?s birth certificate. ?With unemployment at 10 percent, our country engaged in two wars, and Arizona hurting more than ever, Mr. Hayworth obviously has his priorities upside down,? McCain says.

Hayworth plans to make border security and immigration policy key issues in the primary. McCain, a former booster of comprehensive immigration legislation, says he welcomes the debate. ?I?m focused on doing everything we can to secure our borders, especially now that Mexico is in an existential struggle with the drug cartels,? he says. ?We have to secure our borders first. We have to do that before we do anything else, to make sure we protect against any danger that could potentially cross over.?

To counter Hayworth?s growing support, McCain has enlisted Sen. Scott Brown (R., Mass.) and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, his running mate during the 2008 presidential campaign, to stump for him in the Grand Canyon State. He would also like to bring in Mitt Romney, his former opponent for the GOP presidential nomination. ?I?d really appreciate it if Mitt Romney came,? McCain says. ?We?d really like to have him. We haven?t made any specific arrangement yet, but I?d like to see that. He is a man I respect.?

McCain says he also continues to admire Palin and how she handled her liberal critics. ?The hysterical attacks from the left on Sarah Palin continue to amuse and entertain me,? he says. ?Every time they attack her, she gets stronger. To the Left?s cable-television people, I say keep it up. Nobody is watching, but keep it up.? Democrats, he adds, ?are scared of her, literally afraid of her, because she?s their worst nightmare: a mother, wonderful family member, successful governor, and a role model to many young Americans, both men and women.?

McCain truly believes that his best years in the Senate are yet to come. He says that after losing the 2008 election, it would have been easy to drift away from the center of debates, but staying quiet or uninvolved has never been part of his character. Fighting the Obama agenda in the Senate, on health care and national security as well as spending, has been ?the best way to bounce back,? he says.

?Once the presidential campaign was over, I knew that the best cure was to get busy,? McCain says. ?[Minority leader] Mitch McConnell and I talked early on, and he said he wanted me to start playing a leadership role on a number of issues. I said, ?I?d be glad to.? So, I proposed the Republican alternative to the stimulus package. Then I offered the first amendment to the health-care bill to stop the Medicare cuts. I loved those debates, and I appreciate the fact that Mitch McConnell and the rest of the caucus, like Jon Kyl, asked me to take on a significant role this past year. It?s something I?m very proud to have done, and I feel good to be back doing the things the people of Arizona elected me to do.?

McCain says he knew early on that the Obamacare scrum in the Senate was going to be about more than policy minutiae -- it was about public opinion and ?the voice of the American people being heard.?

?From town-hall meetings to hours and hours, days and days in hearings and the façade of the Democrats? mark-up sessions, we fought this,? McCain says. ?Republicans did a pretty fantastic job. We keep hearing about how they?re pushing for a 51-vote option, but I think the final nail is almost in this bill?s coffin. I give a lot of credit to John Boehner and Mitch McConnell for their leadership.?

?Still, we shouldn?t pat ourselves on the back yet,? McCain says. ?There is still a lot of work to be done in 2010. We need to stop this bill, for good, and continue to fight every step of the way with the Democrats on spending. Domestically, the president continues to govern from the left in a center-right country and we?ll call him on that.?

Quarrelling with Obama, however, ?won?t be enough,? McCain says. ?We Republicans are going to have to come out in the spring with another Contract with America. We?ve had positive counterproposals on the stimulus, the budget, and health care, but have not been able to sufficiently get those ideas out there to the American people. Now is the time for the party to come together -- and we are -- on a positive agenda. I?ll do everything I can to help craft it and I?m very excited about that. The ideas are already out there, too, macro and micro, from a balanced-budget amendment to eliminating pork-barrel spending to committing our support to small businesses and getting rid of the regulatory burdens that have been stifling their growth.?

McCain says the GOP also needs ?to promise voters not to repeat what we did after we got the majorities in both chambers and the presidency.? The party, he says, ?blew [its] mandate by letting spending get out of control. We must be clear not only in our policy goals, but in promising that we won?t do that again.?

On foreign policy, McCain says Republicans ?can and need to support and work with the president on a variety of issues -- the war in Afghanistan, in particular, and in developing a cohesive and viable policy toward Iran.? Nonetheless, on Iraq, McCain says he?s ?deeply disappointed? with Jim Jones, President Obama?s national-security adviser, for saying on Fox News earlier this week that the 2007 troop surge was not entirely vital. ?He knows better than that,? McCain says, adding that he ?almost fell off the couch? when he watched Vice President Joe Biden take credit for the recent success in Iraq on CBS and NBC this past Sunday.

?We?re living in a dangerous world, and the Christmas Day bomber was another incident that woke us up to that fact,? McCain says. ?The way it was handled needs to be addressed, so Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham and I are working on legislation as we speak to make sure an enemy combatant will never be able to be tried in a civil court. They?re not citizens, and they?re not criminals -- they?re terrorists, and they don?t deserve the constitutional rights that American citizens enjoy. We have to put that into law, since we can?t depend on Attorney General [Eric] Holder or President Obama to keep that commitment.?

McCain says he remains ?disappointed? with how Holder and deputy national-security adviser John Brennan have behaved in the weeks after the failed attack. ?For Brennan to question our patriotism and allege that any criticism serves the goals of al-Qaeda is stunning,? McCain says. ?I won?t accuse Mr. Brennan of helping al-Qaeda, but I will certainly accuse him of incompetence. With Holder, we knew he was a very left-leaning liberal lawyer, and he continues to show us that he?s tone-deaf to the wishes of the American people in his push to have terrorist trials in New York City.?

As we wrap up our talk, the Arizona senator pauses and mentions Bayh, reflecting for a moment on the Indiana Democrat?s early retirement. McCain says he understands why, if someone ?faces a tough reelection battle,? they?d decide ?to hang it up.? What he doesn?t get is Bayh?s lack of love for the Senate. ?I love the fight,? McCain says. ?I have a lot of respect for Evan Bayh, but he didn?t learn yesterday that Washington is a city of gridlock. I understand his reasons, but unlike him, I do love it. I love being in the arena, being on the floor, even for three- or four-minute colloquies. I love it. I enjoy it enormously. I?m Scotch-Irish, and I?ve always identified with this old saying: A fight not joined is a fight not enjoyed. I still feel that way today.?

To keep up the fight, McCain will have to beat Hayworth. For the moment, though, the Mac seems to be back -- and sounding more like a right-winger than ever. But the brio is all the same.

-- Robert Costa is the William F. Buckley Jr. Fellow at the National Review Institute.

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on February 18, 2010 (boomark / email).