Does McCain Know Who His Constituency Is?

If John McCain should bumble his way to victory in November, he might have the New York Times to thank. This last February, after it became clear that McCain was the default nominee of the Republicans, the Times published on its front page a poorly sourced story intimating that McCain was involved in an affair with an attractive lady lobbyist. The story was untrue and John McCain was justifiably outraged. And from that moment on, McCain, a man who forgives slowly, finally grasped that the mainstream media, whose good opinions he had cultivated for years, were not his friends.

All politicians are flawed. The single greatest defect in our political system is that we can only choose our leaders from those who consider themselves worthy of the job. William F. Buckley once opined that he would rather be governed by 100 people chosen randomly from a phone book than by the faculty of the Harvard law school. And the higher the political office, the more distrustful we should be of the candidate. Anyone who thinks that he should be president surely suffers from one or more profound personality disorders. But it is from among these people whom we must choose to give the authority to launch nuclear weapons.

John McCain’s most obvious disorder is that he constantly needs approval. And for the last decade or so, he has pursued the approval of the mainstream media. He wanted to read favorable editorials about himself in the Washington Post and the New York Times. He sought as many invitations to “Meet the Press” as he could gain. In both cases, like a trained seal desirous of a fish, he learned that he could earn his reward by pursuing goals contrary to the Republican Party and conservatism.

This need for approval from Washington’s Brahman caste and his own moral vanity would drive him to push the McCain campaign finance reform bill through Congress. Not only did the liberal pundits love it, but he believed that it also helped him wash away his greatest stain – the Keating Five scandal.

Just about two decades ago, John McCain was scolded by the Senate for intervening on behalf of his close friend, Charles Keating. Under Keating’s leadership, Lincoln Savings and Loan had invested recklessly and he found himself in difficulty with bank regulators. He asked his close personal friend, John McCain, along with four others to whom he had donated generously, to intervene on his behalf. Ultimately, McCain received the gentlest of scoldings, while others were censured and three lost their seats in the Senate.

McCain could never accept full responsibility for his choices and blamed “the system” for his embarrassment. And so he set about to change the system. The result was the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act, which was very popular in mainstream media newsrooms and editorial boards. McCain probably thought that he had finally won the approval of those whose opinions mattered most to him. The New York Times showed him that he was mistaken. All those years of thumbing his nose at conservatism and his own party had earned him nothing. And it was this revelation that drove him to win back the conservative base. And his campaign has prospered ever since.

His new embrace of conservatism certainly contributed to his selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee. The John McCain whose greatest ambition was the approval of the New York Time’s editorial board would never have chosen Sarah Palin. A candidate who lusted for favorable treatment by the Washington Post newsroom would never have embraced Newt Gingrich’s “Drill Here, Drill Now” campaign.

Not only did McCain’s sudden conservatism solidify his base, but it has thrown the opposition off its game. The left has descended into all manner of slur in its attempt to damage Sarah Palin, even to the point of attacking her children. Barack Obama has been exposed as a man who cannot handle adversity well. Faced with a genuine challenge for the first time in his political career, he seems unable to gain his footing.

Now Obama is reduced to complaining that too much attention is being paid to his remark about “lipstick on a pig,” and is trying to refocus attention on issues that really matter, such as how many homes John McCain’s wife owns.

It remains to be seen if McCain can be trusted after November 5th. But thanks to the reprehensible behavior of the left-leaning mainstream media, perhaps John McCain will remember who his real constituency is.