Rough Rider II versus Slick Willie II?
The American Thinker reproduced a letter from Senator McCain to senator Obama from 2006 that reads a bit like the Onion or the Harvard Lampoon:
I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadership’s preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offer the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable.
Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter to me dated February 2, 2006, which explained your decision to withdraw from our bipartisan discussions. I’m embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble…
I have consistently maintained that any lobbying reform proposal be bipartisan. The bill Senators Joe Lieberman and Bill Nelson and I have introduced is evidence of that commitment…I initially believed you shared that goal. But I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party’s effort to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman Senator, and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness. Again, I have been around long enough to appreciate that in politics the public interest isn’t always a priority for every one of us. Good luck to you, Senator.
John McCain sometimes seems to present himself as a reincarnation of TR, with his military experience and iconoclastic attitude, as well as his trust busting, regulating, and conservationist reflexes. It would appear from the letter above that McCain in turn sees Senator Obama as something like a new Slick Willie, a slippery fellow whose words cannot be taken for more than the nice sounds they made at the time they were uttered. (That puts McCain one step ahead of where Newt Gingrich was in 1995, when the Speaker was momentarily beguiled by the President.) Whether these times need either a new Roosevelt or a new Clinton is a matter that remains to be seen.