The "maverick" who forgot Gitmo, wouldn't say "climate change"

by Will Bunch | Columnist

Published Sep. 5, 2008, 1:09 a.m. ET

"I would immediately close Guantanamo Bay, move all the prisoners to Fort Leavenworth

— and truly expedite the judicial proceedings in their cases."

-- John McCain. March 19, 2007.

—

-- John McCain, Sept. 4, 2008.

"Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters, and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring.

— We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great.”

-- John McCain, May 13, 2008.

...."restore the health of our planet"

-- John McCain, Sept. 4, 2008.

"You well know I've been called a maverick, someone who marches to the beat of his own drum."

-- John McCain, Sept. 4, 2008.

Yeah, right. Did anybody else notice that the maverick's drum missed a major beat and a half tonight? That's the problem with so much newspaper coverage (like the current New York Times headline, "Acceptance Speech Highlights Record of Defying G.O.P.") and TV blather, that so much attention is focused on what the guy (or gal) said -- and such little is noted of what he or she didn't say.

Let's consider the "maverick" John McCain. He has taken some bold political risk in the past -- sponsoring the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms and opposing the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 spring to mind -- but to get the GOP nomination this week he had to spend the last 19 months chucking these down the memory hole, so it wasn't exactly a shocker when they weren't mentioned tonight to burnish those maverick credentials. So how'd he justify his claim?

He slammed his own party on graft -- "we lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption" -- but that's pretty easy when Jack Abramoff isn't in the room and everyone who is there thinks he's talking about somebody else. Both parties didn't cut the size of government enough? -- hardly a bold challenge to a house full of GOPers.

There were two major maverick stands that John McCain took this year, two fairly brave positions that actually bucked the majority of the Dittoheads in his own party. One was his promise to close Guantanamo, and the other was his pledge to respect the scientific evidence that climate change is a major problem.

But tonight, on the big American stage, the maverick pretty much left those in the saddle bag. OK, his reference to "restore the health of the planet" was his straight talk, I guess, on global warming, but I pretty much missed that line the first time around, and I promise you that 95 percent of the nation missed it, too. The thing is, the best way to tell the electorate that you take the problems known as "global warming" or "climate change" or "greenhouse gases" seriously is to show people that you weren't afraid to use those very terms in a room dominated by Limbaugh-loving science skeptics.

But you were afraid.

And the failure to mention closing Gitmo -- or the fact that when you were actually still a bit of a maverick you bucked the White House with anti-torture legislation in 2005 -- is unconscionable, in my opinion. The fact that McCain had been tortured himself -- as he so eloquently recounted again tonight -- and, once upon a time, stood as a moral force in this country who would stand up to make sure that we never stooped to that level, was once a compelling argument for a McCain presidency. Now that argument is long gone. Was the problem that it was a cross-current with his Hanoi narrative, or was it just too much of a challenge to a right-wing audience that would gladly follow Bush's torture policies to the gates of hell, and right on through them?

Either way, John McCain was a "safe" maverick tonight.

Which means he was no maverick at all.