Why Rush is Wrong About McCain

“Why Rush Is Wrong About McCain” might be a slightly disingenuous title. Better would be “Why Rush Is Probably Correct About McCain But Has Missed The Point Entirely.”

First a disclaimer. I am not affiliated with any political candidate or organization. I am not in the habit of writing to or communicating with political candidates or organizations, and I have discussed the contents of this blog with, well, nobody. So this ain’t no big sophisticated machine talking, just — to paraphrase Underdog — little ol’ me.

So onward. I have listened sporadically to Mr. Limbaugh’s radio program for many years. its attraction is several-fold. First, Mr. Limbaugh bases his opinions on logical deductions from verifiable facts. Despite the hysteria of his almost constant opponents, their response typically consists of little more then emotional rants along the lines of “you fascist.” He is, therefore, more often right than wrong. Second, Mr. Limbaugh’s values — the so-called conservative values — tend to mirror my own. And lastly, Mr. Limbaugh does this with generous doses of humor.

Even when Mr. Limbaugh has erred, I have never been motivated to publicly point it out. Being a student of logical argument myself, there certainly have been occasions where the talk show host’s argument contains a flaw. So why now am I jumping into the fray? Because we have an unusual situation. Mr. Limbaugh is completely correct — yet utterly wrong.

If you are still reading, I am finally getting to the point. Mr. Limbaugh is correct in his assertion that Senator McCain’s voting record and ideas sometimes locate him in a different ideological corner than the masses of the Republican Party. So where is he wrong? He is wrong in that this has to do with anything whatsoever.

Mr. Limbaugh has erred in believing that when we elect a President, we are electing a Chief of Ecomomic Ideas, or a Chief of Immigration Ideas, or a Chief of Any Type of Cool Policy Stuff That Candidates Debate About. Forget it. Those are — or should be — congressional and senatorial elections. We are electing one thing and one thing only: the President of the United States of America. The Commander-in-Chief of possibly the only world superpower. The Leader of the Free World. The Man with the Finger on the Button. A Leader. The Leader. Not the guy we like the most. Not the guy whose ideas are coolest. Not the guy who can give the best speeches. The guy who can lead a nation. The guy who can sit — or stand — toe to toe with enemy and ally and it is clear that he is somebody to be reckoned with.

Not manager of the nation. President Carter tried that, Governor Romney would like to try that. Nope. We can hire managers.

Books have been written trying to figure out why President Reagan was and is so beloved by conservatives when he made many compromises with his ideological opponents. You do not have to study the issue much. He was the leader of the United States of America.

Everything else is secondary or tertiary. OK, it would be nice if the best candidate for President also happened to have the same ideas as me. But that ain’t what electing a President is all about.

There is one area where you could jump up and down and try and refute my point, and that is the area of selecting judges. But given the recent analysis in the WSJ by law professors of McCain’s likely judicial selections, there seems to be little to worry about there.

So Mr. Limbaugh, you are correct. But you have just missed the mark on what exactly we are doing when we elect a President.