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Mario Tama, Getty Images

Presidential contender John McCain greets supporters at a rally yesterday in Nashua, New Hampshire. (FPinfomart: Restricted, Canada.com: Allowed)

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John McCain for president
National Post
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Page: A14
Section: Editorial
Byline: Jonathan Kay
Column: Jonathan Kay
Source: National Post

In Canada, a perfectly intelligent and respectable politician can be laughed off by the pundit class for no other reason than that he happens to embrace Jesus Christ and the fundamentalist Christian notion that the world is 6,000 years old. In the United States, it is the opposite: Even a total loon can leap to the front of the pack if he preaches his political sermons straight from the Good Book.

In Canada, the poster boy is Stock-well Day. His American cousin is Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor, Southern Baptist minister, bass guitar player and, as of last week, the leading presidential pick among Iowa's Republican caucus-goers.

Put aside Huckabee's controversial tenure as governor. All casual election observers need to know about him is the fact that he wants to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, and replace income taxes with a national 23% sales tax -- a silly, populist notion that makes a mockery of (among other things) his own rhetoric about protecting the working man. Aside from state lotteries and taxes on cigarettes, sales taxes are just about the most regressive taxes a government can levy, slamming with full force the little guy who spends his whole paycheque at Wal-Mart, while going easy on richer folk who bank most of what they earn.

On the other hand, if I were one of the self-described evangelical or born-again Christians who comprised 60% of Republican Iowa caucus-goers, and I were looking for someone who "shares my values" (their most commonly cited voting criterion), I too might have picked Huckabee over establishment candidate Mitt Romney, a one-time New England moderate who gave himself a creepy overnight ideological makeover since making his presidential bid.

In Saturday's edition of the National Post, David Frum gamely argued that Huckabee's takedown of Romney will ultimately advantage Rudy Giuliani, who will triumph on the strength of his bi-coastal winnability. I don't buy that either. The Onion had Giuliani's number right a year ago when it ran a satirical article titled "Giuliani to run as president of 9/11." ("If elected, Giuliani would inherit the duties of current 9/11 President George W. Bush, including making grim facial expressions, seeing the world's conflicts in terms of good and evil and carrying a bullhorn at all state functions.")

Americans don't want a 9/11 president. The pre-Iraq intelligence failures, Abu Ghraib, the torture memos, domestic spying, Valerie Plame and destroyed interrogation videotapes have all conspired to make the pomp of mission-accomplished, axis-of-evil posturing seem obsolete and even slightly ridiculous -- even if most Americans realize that the stakes in the war on terror remain deadly serious. Thanks to missing WMDs and Enron, America is going through an anti-establishment phase, as it did after Vietnam, during which the very concept of authority is in disrepute. It wants a scrappy maverick, not a father figure.

Which brings me to the man whose name yields 149,000 hits when you Google it alongside "maverick."

I have a weakness for tragic political heroes who hang in there with big, important ideas, even when everyone else is laughing at them (Exhibit A: my much-mocked ode to Al Gore a few months back.) From the get-go, John McCain championed the surge in Iraq -- even travelled to Iraq in support of it -- at a time in early 2007 when the American war malaise was thick. Everyone worth listening to was telling McCain to shut up about the issue, that it was nose-diving his presidential chances (which it did, until a few months ago).

But he didn't shut up -- because he embraced the principle that America has a moral responsibility to fix what it clumsily broke in Iraq with its original, misguided war plan. At a time when many presidential candidates were triangulating their withdrawal plans to the brigade level according to the latest polls, McCain was a staunch supporter of Bush's surge.

McCain has been one of the few Republicans to challenge the Bush administration when the President and his lieutenants flouted humane standards on prisoner treatment. Sometimes, he carries his hawk-with-a-conscience shtick too far. (As another Onion headline put it: "McCain to send self back to Vietnamese POW camp to revitalize campaign"). But this man does know a thing or two about torture and captivity, so I am willing to cut him some slack.

McCain is less known for his position on domestic issues. But he's on the right side of most of those, too. He wants to make Bush's tax cuts permanent. And on immigration, he's refused to join in with Romney, Giuliani and Fred Thompson, who have descended into xenophobic hysteria in a bid to bottom-feed off their party's most bigoted fringes.

On the Democratic side, the Obama-Clinton fight is being billed as one of change versus experience. The Republicans are fortunate enough to have a guy who serves up both. He'll win today in New Hampshire. And I hope he takes the rest of the country as well.

jkay@nationalpost.com

Illustration:
• Black & White Photo: Mario Tama, Getty Images / Presidential contender John McCain greets supporters at a rally yesterday in Nashua, New Hampshire.

Idnumber: 200801080049
Edition: National
Story Type: Column
Length: 827 words
Keywords: ELECTIONS; POLITICAL PARTIES; POLITICIANS; CANDIDATES; GOVERNMENT; UNITED STATES; VOTING
Illustration Type: P

PRODUCTION FIELDS
NDATE: 20080108
NUPDATE: 20080108
DOB: 20080108
POSITION: 1