For most of this campaign cycle I have supported the presidential candidacy of Mayor Rudy Guiliani. Recently I have seen fit to forge a different course. Accordingly, I endorse Senator John McCain for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.
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Circumstances must always control the mind of the conscientious and reasoned voter. Two circumstances weigh upon me at this time, and ought to weigh upon every Republican voter.
The first is our party’s political straits. We are in rough shape. The President and standard-bearer of our party has poor approval ratings. We lost both houses of Congress last year, and face the prospect of further losses next year. In every poll voters prefer the generic Democrat over the Republican, for both Congress and the White House. Democrats now have a majority of the state governor’s mansions and a plurality of state legislatures as well.
In my admittedly brief political consciousness the Republican brand has never been mired in such public unpopularity, and lest we nominate the absolute right candidate next year Democrats will control both political branches of the federal government and the ability to shape the third, the judicial branch, in their favor. As Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnoru pointed out recently in a compelling article in National Review, the expansion of government that would surely ensue would "make voters less likely to turn toward conservatism in the future."
My friends, we cannot nominate the generic Republican. We need a nominee who transcends party, who can reach the American people on his own terms.
Senator McCain would be that nominee. Having run for President eight years ago and having been one of the most prominent elected officials in the federal government since, he has been introduced to the American people and has earned their admiration and respect. His record of nearly forty years of service to the United States, beginning with his heroic service as a pilot and POW in Vietnam, also needs no preface nor explanation.
As our party endeavors to recover from the stain of corruption and our lost standing as the party of competence, Senator McCain would be a standard-bearer with an integrity of granite. His career in the Senate has been marked by the pursuit of honest and accountable government (though this has admittedly led him to excess on occasion, see the McCain-Feingold Act).
Herein is part of the impetus for my departure from Mayor Giuliani. Rumors and reports of his ethical lapses as Mayor of New York City would only be a distraction in the general election, despite his other advantages, and this would be the last thing the party needs in the wake of Tom Delay, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney et al.1
This would not be the case with Senator McCain. He represents the best of the party regarding ethics, as well as our squandered instincts of fiscal discipline. As the Republican nominee Americans would see a man whom they could trust to be a good and dutiful steward of their hard-earned tax dollars.
What’s more, Senator McCain’s honesty and ethics would shine all the more brighter in comparison to Senator Clinton and her and her husband’s long list of ethical lapses, should she in fact be the Democrats’ nominee.
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That second of the two circumstances I spoke of earlier is Iraq and the broader war on terror. Presidential elections are obviously always important, but especially so when the nation is at war.
We are at war; at war with an insidious enemy which follows none of the conventional rules of war and basic standards of human decency. They kill blindly and indiscriminately, and in their twisted worship of death feel no hesitation in perishing themselves in the process.
In our history we have faced our share of threats, but none greater than that presented by these barbarians. To defeat them will require sustained national resolve on the part of the people, and commanders-in-chief with the personal fortitude and good wisdom and judgment to execute this war effectively.
Winning this war first requires us to win in Iraq, the place which our enemies themselves have declared its central front. From the very beginning of our involvement in Iraq Senator McCain has been a steadfast supporter of our military effort there and has recognized the vital strategic importance victory represents.
In this vain he had been a major critic of President Bush’s and then-Secretary Rumsfeld’s original counterinsurgency strategy—which was failing—and was the first elected official within the federal government to propose and support the current counterinsurgent strategy which has led to the recent dramatically positive improvements on the ground. These views have not always been popular, but they have always been right.
In this time and at this place in history such fortitude and good judgment is exactly what we need in our next President. More than any other candidate whose name is before the American people, Senator McCain can be expected and trusted to do right by our involvement in Iraq—to achieve victory there and to get us out when that has been achieved—and to do right by our prosecution of the broader war against extremist Islam. He is the man who is able to stand up to Democrats in Congress and those running for president whose policy is get out now, disastrous consequences of retreat and defeat be damned.
My fellow Republicans, I know Senator McCain is not a perfect conservative, and he has indeed taken a few positions with which you and I have disagreed. But there is no perfect conservative or Republican, and we certainly do not have the luxury of holding out for one now. Let us not fall into the temptation to compare every poor soul who seeks our party’s nomination to the late President Reagan, himself not a perfect conservative, and then reject them when they inevitably fail. President Reagan was a man whose memory should inspire us, not one whose ghost haunts us in our futile and self-defeating attempt to find him reincarnate in our next nominee.
Senator McCain is a strong, principled conservative and he has the best chance of any of the Republicans who would be our nominee of insuring that conservatism will have a home in the White House for the next four years.
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Circumstances always demand that certain figures rise to the occasion. This has especially been the case with America. At our founding we had George Washington. At our time of disunion we had Abraham Lincoln. At the time of world war we had Franklin Roosevelt. And in the face of an evil empire we had Ronald Reagan.
On this occasion—at this pivotal place in the history of our blessed republic—the occasion and the arena calls for Senator McCain. I have no doubt that he is the man for the moment.
I urge my fellow Republicans and my fellow Americans to join me in supporting Senator McCain for President of the United States.
Geoff Smock,
Pacific Lutheran University
Pacific Lutheran University
1. Of the two—Senator McCain and Mayor Giuliani, both of whom I believe represent the party’s best chance of winning in the general—Senator McCain also stands the better chance of appealing to moderate Republicans, independents, and centrist Democrats while maintaining the pro-life portion of the Republican coalition within the party. I do not know if Mayor Giuliani could.
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