John McCain's Promise

Dorothy Rabinowitz clarifies the picture surrounding the McCain comeback, at the Wall Street Journal :

In the midst of all the gloomy prognostications that John McCain was as good as gone, one encountered person after unexpected person - people, that is, who don't vote Republican - who announced themselves McCain enthusiasts. They are an old story, these Americans who discovered Mr. McCain in 2000, but it is a story with new meaning today.

All those New York editors sitting in publishing houses, those teachers and publicists and medical professionals, remained solid McCainites. Whatever their political views, whatever shift in their opinions, they seemed, those I knew, to have lost none of their feeling for this candidate. For all his politically incorrect positions - his support of the war, and George Bush - or perhaps because of them, this core army of his admirers remains as certain as they ever were, if not more, that he's the man to lead the nation.

In the primary campaign of 2000, people stood for hours in the freezing cold. In upstate towns they waited for Mr. McCain, home-made signs in their hands, their messages so brief, so charged with the emotions of the men and women holding them - "AMERICAN HERO" - it took your breath away to see it. The transportation for the candidate and reporters traveling with him had been named, only half-mischievously, the Straight Talk Express.

Now, these hard years later, the meaning of that name takes on larger dimensions, and the straight talk in question -about the war, about his support for the president, his stand on immigration, all so costly to him, and so unhesitatingly given - has also been the making of him. It is this, first of all, that people recognize in him.

Almost as in the old days, he's begun to get plenty of respect from the media. Though the word "old" keeps showing up in regular, not always innocent and invariably hammy tributes - as when his name is attached to terms like "the old warrior" or simply "old soldier." There's indeed something suitable in the word as regards Mr. McCain, but it is nothing having to do with his age.

That ingrained pride of his that forbids pandering for political gain--that would be shamed by lying about his deeply held views - is what is old about him. Old in the sense that honor of this kind is sufficiently rare, now, that it's a subject of wonderment to people when they find it in someone, as they have in John McCain.

Also, don't miss the Boston Herald's comparison of McCain and Romney's relative experience.

I made the case for McCain on Sunday: "Can McCain Win the Conservative Vote?"

Check back for more updates (and see also Memeorandum).