The McCain Difference

The current Democratic strategy focuses around painting John McCain as "McSame" as Bush -- a man running for a third term. That's not entirely fair, as McCain really does differ from Bush on a few important issues. On climate change, for example, McCain is clearly better. But on national security policy, McCain is, if anything, more hard core than Bush. This is clear in his record, but we're also starting to see it on some forward looking issues like North Korea where McCain wants to repudiate Bush's current policy and go back to Bush's previous, more rightwing policy.

Bush abandoned that policy eventually because even he came to see that it was a disastrous failure but McCain, in keeping with his record, wants to bring back the super-duper-crazy Bush of 2003-2005 in place of the semi-chastened Bush we've seen for the past couple of years.