Sheesh. McCain has turned into such a have-it-both-ways weenie. Any day now i expect one of his flaks to issue the statement: "Senator McCain truly feels your pain. Now hold still while we tighten the screws just a little more."

At one time - up until just after his failed 2000 Presidential bid - I had a tremendous amount of respect for the man. But he completely caved to the White House: in a most thorough, remarkable, and obvious way.

Is it just me, or was anybody else surprised by the almost instantaneous change in his demeanor and combativeness, after King George was elected? McCain seemed to go over to the Dark Side in a split second, without missing a beat. Can people really want to be President that badly?

Is it just that he's spent so much of his life prepared to follow orders? He comes from three generations of a proud family history that might lead one to that assumption. But that untempered willingness to follow disqualifies him to be President, in my opinion - whatever his true values and beliefs might be.

My other thought on the matter - and I hate to say it, while maintaining that the obligations of living in a free society (or what's left of it) demand that I do - is that he may have been left vulnerable by his time in the hands of the North Vietnamese: if only in perception.

There is an interesting tradition in both the fact and fiction (literature, TV, whatever) of the halls of power, which holds that the safest course for any government or society is to deny power to one who has fallen into the hands of the enemy in time of war. The theory is that human beings are uncertain enough - but modern brain-washing techniques being what they are, taking the chance on even the remotest possibility of having a powerful leader who might turn on you (or be turned, by one who can take advantage of weakness) is simply too much of a chance.

In any case; whatever the truth may be, I find McCain's acceptance of the idea that there can be any compromise - ever - on the people's oversight of their leaders to be odious:

"In any compromise between food and poison, the only winner is death." - Ayn Rand

JF

This is just complete bullcrap. Who elected Scott McClellan to anything? Republicans should consider the precendence of the amount of power they are handing over to the Executive. Next time it may not be a Republican sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania.

David Helms:

"Next time it may not be a Republican sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania."

Forgive me, but I believe you may be suffering from a failure of imagination...

Firstly, these theocratic wingnuts are not Republicans, they are budding tyrants.

And secondly, it would appear to be axiomatic to their actions that they don't believe there's any possibility that anyone but them will be occupying (a deliberate choice of word) 1600 at any time in the forseeable future.

Diebold willing, of course...

JF

McCellan, to be totally honest, would have had to say that the administration is withholding the documents from the Senate in order to prevent civil unrest and loss of life, as the documents would make it all the more clear that we are a government of War Criminals who deceived the American people into an unnecessary, illegal, and immoral attack upon Iraq. We do not need to provide more dots to connect that inevitably leads to the aforesaid conclusion, and we would not have enough Secret Service agents, and most of the National Guard is in Iraq. Let sleeping dogs lie, let bygones be bygones, and let's move on, for the good of the country. Next question ....... Helen.

cletus:

There is a point at which the good of a country and the good of its citizens fails to intersect.

We're awfully close to that.

Moving on to the next question doesn't make it go away.

JF

I think it is looking more and more like the GOP Senators have decided to look for a face-saving way to scuttle this nomination, without having to vote for or against. The NSA intercepts gives them the cover to do so. Here's why I think this:

First, I'm increasingly convinced that Specters oddly-timed chemo appointment was designed to deprive the cloture vote of the necessary votes, but in a way that could not be criticized. It was a move on the part of a REPUBLICAN to ensure the cloture vote wouldn't pass. Perhaps Scottish Law acted alone. Perhaps not.

Second, there's a weird mix of collegiality and blame going on between Reid and Fristie. Reid and Fristie were ALREADY oddly friendly, given the nuclear bombs they were going to throw at each other. Further, consider how many articles talked about Reid telling Frist whether or not there were the votes to pass cloture (this was used, usually, to blame the Dems for being disingenuous on the Bolton vote; I don't believe for a second that Reid is doing Frist's vote-counting, but it speaks to an odd cooperation that Reid would even accept this blame--how can a majority party blame the minority party for NOT DOING THE VOTECOUNTING fairly for the majorit???). Then, before the cloture vote on Thursday, the GOP and Dem leaders (including Biden and Dodd) had a little pow-wow on the floor of the Senate which actually stalled the vote. This was explained as Reid telling Frist he should roll the dice, but why include McConnell, Lugar, Dodd and Biden??

And now McCain. It is unlike McCain not to make this point before the cloture vote; he's well-skilled at using parliamentary maneuvers to get what he wants, but chose instead to either wait until after the vote to complain or was convinced to intervene post-vote. I actually have no doubt McCain wants Bolton. But I can see McCain, as one of the leaders of those Senators trying to establish some independence from the White House to intervene in such a way that would endorse a continued Dem filibuster. Either that, or send the message to teh WH that if they wanted Bolton, they should recess him.

I guess what I'm saying is that enough GOP Senators don't want Bolton, but they don't want to directly oppose the White House. So things are happening such that the GOP won't have to vote upperdown on Bolton; he'll either be recessed (which would at least save the Senators the embarrassment of supporting a nutcase) or he'll be stuck in a virtual-filibuster.

have actually been very collegial in the middle of this whol

emptywheel:

I don't think there's too much hope that the WH will permit the issue to fade away into a non-resolution of Senatorial inaction or compromise.

They have too much invested in it, and in the idea that they must win at all cost. The overweening importance of what the Executive must reveal to the people is driving this debate above all else.

And the WH's stand on the matter has been expressed without equivocation (but with unbridled arrogance) by Scott McClellan [italics mine], in this quote from the NY Times (article at http://tinyurl.com/bodau):

"The Democrats who are clamoring for this have already voted against John Bolton," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said in a telephone interview. "This is about partisan politics, not documents. They have the information they need."

This statement is the core of the WH's effort to destroy the basic freedoms of our country. WE decide when we have the information we need, and what that information is. If this stands, our hope lies in other venues than the parliamentarian.

JF

JF

That's why I keep harping on the Specter's funny chemo schedule. The WH may be harping about the Dems, but that only serves to hide the fact that there is at least SOME opposition from the GOP on the Bolton nomination. Perhaps more than Specter and Voinovich and people like McCain who would love Bolton to be UN Ambassador, but who are also willing to call the WH on their intransigence.

In other words, for a few days, this will continue to be about obstructionist Democrats. But within a short period, the GOP moderates are either going to cave, the WH is going to recess Bolton (which, if I'm right about moderate opposition, will be more costly than it would have been a few weeks ago). Or we're going to have moderate GOP-supported gridlock.

In other words, I agree that the WH believes it must win at all costs. But that is only a tenable position so long as they can pretend this a battle against JUST the Democrats. When and if it becomes clear that the GOP is working to scuttle this TOO, then it will be a lot harder to push as hard as they're doing. The WH can't afford to be "shocked" over Bolton setbacks too many more times before it comes to emphasize their increasing inability to dictate to their own caucus.

JF -

If withdrawing the nomination or letting it die are out of the question for the WH that leaves 2 options:
1. a recess appointment
2. an up-or-down vote

But for (2) to happen several Democrats would have to vote 'yes' on a future cloture vote without documents being released - enough to accumulate 60 votes - and allowing for possible Republican defection(s).

Will a recess appointment make the WH look as though it compromised? I think in many ways it is the worst of all possible outcomes: a clearly even-more-damaged appointee, a frustrated Senate and a White House almost certainly prepared to exert even more pressure the next time around.

Or am I missing something?

And, on the topic of McCain - why does he fascinate so many people? I have never (and I mean 'never') understood the man's appeal.

"McCain has turned into such a have-it-both-ways weenie..."

He is taking his cues from the biggest weenie of them all: Voinovitch. If Bolton is as bad as Voinovitch says he is, why didn't he kill the nomination in committee when he had the chance?

These guys are not only weenies, they're first class hypocrites too!

The Bush administration is very similar in its' iron-grip on power to Hitler's Nazi regime in the 1930s...

These neo-con thugs including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Rove, etc. want to cover-up for the fact that Bolton abused the NSA intercepts to punish anybody who doesn't bow-down and cower before them...

It is imperative that the GOP Senators stop being Nazi-style collaborators-- used and abused by the Bushies for their own sordid & squalid purposes...

Renee:

I don't think we're served by bringing up the specter of Hitler. Everybody does it at the drop of a hat, and the message is both terribly diluted and polarizing. The left uses it, the wingnuts use it, the moderates use it - let's let that dog lie. There may be parallels; however, those may be found in Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and McCarthyism as well - but without the baggage and resistance to objective thought that Hitler brings to the table.

It's only fighting the last war, anyway - always a problematic battle. Ask the rear echelon troops how the Maginot Line worked out for them...

JF

Renee, we know your heart is fully into this fight, and you are passionate in what you write, but Jamie is somewhat correct that actually using the name 'Hitler' and 'Nazis' is counter-productively extreme. Instead, let me suggest obessessing on the label "War Criminals" and every variation on that theme that may come to mind, excepting Hitler and Nazis, although a little Nuremburg now and then is music to my ears. We need to now always tell of their War Criminality which is there for all to see if the time is taken to be honest with oneself.

Keep on fighting the good fight!

McCain (who happens to represent my state in the Senate) has turned more-than-ususal high profile lately. Could it be he is filling the, as yet, unannounced leadership vaccuum left where Frist has failed to lead the Senate at all.

McCain's integrity is sometimes laudable, sometimes questionable. This time I think he stuck his finger in the wind and found little home state support for this nomination, thus he keeps points in the caucus for supporting Chimpy's choice, and keeps points at home for throwing up a reaonable roadblock.