Obama seeks McCain’s advice

“Obama Reaches Out for McCain’s Counsel,” announces the New York Times, in an article that includes this:

Fred I. Greenstein, emeritus professor of politics at Princeton, said: “I don’t think there is a precedent for this. Sometimes there is bad blood, sometimes there is so-so blood, but rarely is there good blood.”

How can anyone seriously suggest that the good relationship between Obama and McCain is in any way unexpected or out of the ordinary? After all, what does it mean to say that John McCain is a maverick, other than that he has made a career out of siding with the Democrats against his own party? How many times did I and others at this site say that McCain in his heart of hearts wanted Obama to win the presidency, to the point that, if McCain had won, he would have felt so guilty for having prevented a nonwhite from becoming president that he would have been driven to out-Obama Obama, which was a reason not to vote for McCain? And didn’t McCain’s pathetic debate performances against Obama and his excessive and inappropriate praise for Obama in his concession speech on election night confirm these suspicions?

Yet such is liberals’ need for the liberal “script” in which liberals are opposed by “conservatives,” that no matter how many times “conservatives” demonstrate that they are liberals, liberal commentators refuse take in this fact. So they keep pointing out how unusual or noteworthy it is when the “conservative” George W. Bush reaches out to liberals, or when the “conservative” McCain reaches out to liberals, even though that’s what both men have done during their entire time in politics? Without the liberal script, the world would become meaningless to the liberals, for whom the struggle against evil, mean, greedy, bigoted, “conservatives” provides the main justification for their own existence—and the main reason for their joy at Obama’s election.

Here’s the beginning of the Times article:

WASHINGTON—Not long after Senator John McCain returned last month from an official trip to Iraq and Pakistan, he received a phone call from President-elect Barack Obama.

As contenders for the presidency, the two had hammered each other for much of 2008 over their conflicting approaches to foreign policy, especially in Iraq. (He’d lose a war! He’d stay a hundred years!) Now, however, Mr. Obama said he wanted Mr. McCain’s advice, people in each camp briefed on the conversation said. What did he see on the trip? What did he learn?

It was just one step in a post-election courtship that historians say has few modern parallels, beginning with a private meeting in Mr. Obama’s transition office in Chicago just two weeks after the vote. On Monday night, Mr. McCain will be the guest of honor at a black-tie dinner celebrating Mr. Obama’s inauguration.

Over the last three months, Mr. Obama has quietly consulted Mr. McCain about many of the new administration’s potential nominees to top national security jobs and about other issues—in one case relaying back a contender’s answers to questions Mr. McCain had suggested.

Mr. McCain, meanwhile, has told colleagues “that many of these appointments he would have made himself,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a close McCain friend.

Fred I. Greenstein, emeritus professor of politics at Princeton, said: “I don’t think there is a precedent for this. Sometimes there is bad blood, sometimes there is so-so blood, but rarely is there good blood.”

It is “trademark Obama,” Professor Greenstein said, noting that Mr. Obama’s impulse to win over even ideological opposites appeared to date at least to his friendships with conservatives on The Harvard Law Review when he was president. [cont.]

Do you believe that? Greenstein is saying that McCain is Obama’s ideological opposite, and therefore Obama’s reaching out to McCain for advice demonstrates Obama’s praiseworthy openness to opposing views!!! In reality, it simply demonstrates that McCain is not that different from Obama.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 19, 2009 12:53 AM | Send