Ah, to be a speechwriter for John McCain. To know that whatever you write -- whatever policies or ideology or worldview you include, through either conviction or experimentation -- it'll be useful to your candidate in all its permutations. If not today, then tomorrow, or the next day.
Because at the age of 71, Sen. McCain still seems to be finding himself, the poor man. One day he's a rootin-tootin, neoconservative unilateralist -- "I will never surrender in Iraq, my friends; I will never surrender" -- and the next day (and sometimes even on the same day) he's a U.N.-lovin, liberal internationalist who would have made George C. Marshall proud.
His problem, of course, is that he's gone from whacking moles in Iraq to whacking moles here at home. Every time he thinks he's discovered what he's all about -- what he needs to be all about, that is -- George Bush's popularity skids another few points and McCain realizes that even more philosophical distance is advisable.
So he loosens the neocon restraints, but only to be reminded that no matter how bizarrely insignificant Bush's base becomes, he desperately needs every one of its votes.
Hence ideologically bouncing he goes across this once-great Republic, being everything to everyone, while judiciously keeping any specificity at arm's length. Yesterday -- if it's a Tuesday, he's an old-school internationalist? -- was a classic case in point.
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