Po' McCain

Instapundit has a lot of nice references to what Fred Thompson represents and links to the problems of McCain over Free Speech and overregulation in relation to global warming etc. And I'd be delighted to see President 'po boy' Thompson. OTOH, I don't know that any candidate other than McCain has attacked the ethanol subsidies of the corn farmers. He favors free trade and imports from Brazil of cane sugar based ethanol which would capture a large part of our market in ethanol. To me, on economics, McCain walks the walk while others talk the talk. Maybe there is an advantage in cutting taxes in part because the deficits which might occur restrain future entitlements, but that is the easy part. Being for or against immigration or to some extent criticizing the McCain Feingold law is the easy part. The Republicans the last 8 years have been, from the point of view of Republicans criticizing him, great in economic theory, but McCain has been the only one who actually seemed to practice not wasting our money.

A Partial Defense of John McCain

No doubt it is inflammatory, but our current stance on the potential new immigration law put me in mind of a commonality between us and some of our opponents in Iraq, not that every jot and tittle of the law is 'for the best.' One reads, 'it's their (the Iraqis) land and how would you feel..' etc.; never mind that they could elect a government which could tell us to leave and we would go. Never mind that a part of our idea is to leave a country with more opportunity, w/o tyrannical oppression of a large part of the populace, a difference from before. Illegal Mexican immigrants would go to San Salvador rather than the U.S if the jobs were better, 'will work for food' as the placard says. And, in this country, we generally want money because we think we can do something with it; that 'something' at times involves the illegals or they wouldn't be here. So we get something for it, the offsets to these benefits are discussed in an Economist blog. So there may be something more psychological than logical about the objections of the Iraqis and ourselves.

And John McCain? Well, he is one of the sponsors of the immigration bill. He also has had the right ideas at the right time about Iraq, our most important public policy issue. More troops earlier is number one. But how about 'McCain-Feingold'? Not that I am for this bill, but if you look at John McCain's history, it becomes less objectionable. When he was a carrier pilot off of VN, he did not have to fly above a certain longitude north, rank had its privilege. He was and is, by those who know this detail, greatly admired for disdaining this privilege and flying anyway. That is how he was shot down and made a prisoner of war. McCain-Feingold protects incumbents from feeling as much that they have to raise a lot of money to run their races, a rank has its privileges deal, something, for him, natural. It is not the end of the world; it can be changed when he is gone.