Keeping McCain in Mind

Reason Magazine just had John McCain on its cover, (very popular at the recent CPAC meeting--the unflattering story, that is, not McCain) and now he's looking at us from National Review. Here's Ramesh Ponnuru's interview, available online, but for the cover story of the March 19th issue you need to subscribe.

McCain has a conservative record but he doesn't seem to have a consistent conservative philosophy, something that has bothered me for some time. Ponnuru puts his finger on it here:

There are genuinely disconcerting elements to McCain's politics. He talks about cutting spending, but he rarely connects limited government to individual freedom. He is an inveterate moralist, which eludes many observers because he is concerned about honor rather than virtue.

And this sometimes leads him to the regulation (campaign finance) and social engineering (tobacco) of the left. This is why the libertarians are on his case, in addition to their isolationism on the war. And that is also why social conservatives don't entirely trust him, because his ethics aren't grounded in a sense of right or wrong stemming from our Judeo-Christian heritage.

Of course, most conservatives agree with McCain on the war, (recent take here) which is for most of us the overriding issue for our country, so we will keep him in mind.