Barack Obama began his presidency with an open hand toward the man he had just defeated in a race that was at times bitter.
“There are few Americans who understand this need for common purpose and common effort better than John McCain,” said Obama at an inauguration-eve tribute dinner to his former foe.
But in the year since that evening of comity and collegiality, McCain has emerged as one of the leading critics of the new president. On foreign policy, his traditional area of expertise, and domestic affairs, where McCain has shown new passion, the 72-year-old Arizonan is making it plain that he has no plans to serve out his years in the rank-and-file, as a politician known more for what he lost than what he will yet accomplish.
For years, McCain relished being an outsider and a maverick, a style that often led to battles with his own party’s leadership. Today, for reasons that friends and McCain observers say could range from unresolved anger to concern for his right flank as he seeks re-election to genuine dismay about Obama’s agenda, he is helping lead a fiery crusade of GOP loyalists against Democratic priorities – and irked some of his Democratic colleagues in the process.
“The same ferocity he had about beating on Republicans … is now being focused on people on the other side whose agenda is really overreaching,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of McCain’s closest friends in the Senate. “He has every reason to be upset. There’s no change there. What would have been a change was if he wasn’t pissed off.”
“He is now the de facto leader of the Republican Party.”
Because of his Senate platform, longtime fame and a relative dearth of high-wattage Republicans, McCain has become something close to an opposition leader in the Obama era: There he is on the Senate floor denouncing Democrats’ health care plans; there he is on “Meet the Press,” offering the GOP response to the administration’s Afghanistan policy; and there he is back down in South Carolina, holding another town hall meeting with Graham as though the race never ended and the Straight Talk Express is still gassed up and ready to go.
“The first year has been like an extension of the presidential campaign in many ways,” said John Weaver, formerly one of McCain’s closest advisers.
Democrats argue that McCain has marched to the right, pointing to his opposition to Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court after years of trying to avoid battles on judicial nominations; his damaging criticism of the Democrats’ climate change plans when he was an early supporter of cap-and-trade legislation; his attacks on AARP when he actively sought the powerful lobby’s support in the 2008 campaign.
MORE HERE
Suzie-Que's Truth and Justice Blog 