McCain Tries to Cover Up His Flirtations with Becoming a Democrat

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 11:15 AM on March 24, 2008.

A couple of weeks ago, the NYT’s Elisabeth Bumiller asked John McCain about his contradictory stories regarding joining John Kerry’s 2004 Democratic ticket. McCain claimed he "never even considered such a thing," which is clearly false. When Bumiller pressed him on the issue, McCain’s infamous temper didn’t exactly erupt, but he certainly made his displeasure clear.

The incident seems to have prompted Bumiller to take a closer look at the two major flirtations McCain has had with the Democratic Party, neither of which has generated much attention during this year’s campaign.

Senator John McCain never fails to call himself a conservative Republican as he campaigns as his party’s presumptive presidential nominee. He often adds that he was a “foot soldier” in the Reagan revolution and that he believes in the bedrock conservative principles of small government, low taxes and the rights of the unborn.

What Mr. McCain almost never mentions are two extraordinary moments in his political past that are at odds with the candidate of the present: His discussions in 2001 with Democrats about leaving the Republican Party, and his conversations in 2004 with Senator John Kerry about becoming Mr. Kerry’s running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket.

Regular readers may recall that I’ve followed both stories with great interest, in part because I (wrongly) believed McCain’s on-again, off-again romance with Democrats would become a problem for the senator in the Republican primaries. That didn’t exactly work out — McCain’s rivals never pushed the matter, and reporters didn’t bring it up.

But in light of McCain’s mini-tantrum on his campaign plane earlier this month, Bumiller does a good job summarizing what transpired. The questions now are, does this matter, and if so, how?

On the possible 2001 switch…

Democrats were stunned one Saturday in late March when, by their account, John Weaver, Mr. McCain’s longtime political strategist, reached out to Thomas J. Downey, a former Democratic congressman from Long Island who had become a lobbyist with powerful connections on Capitol Hill. In Mr. Downey’s telling, Mr. Weaver posed a question to him over lunch that left him stunned.

“He says, ‘John McCain is wondering why nobody’s ever approached him about switching parties, or becoming an independent and allying himself with the Democrats,’ ” Mr. Downey said in a recent interview. “My reaction was, ‘When I leave this lunch, your boss will be called by anybody you want him to be called by in the United States Senate.’ “

…and on the 2004 Democratic ticket.

[L]ess than three years later, Mr. McCain was once again in talks with the Democrats, this time over whether he would be Mr. Kerry’s running mate. In an interview with a blog last year, Mr. Kerry said that the initial idea had come from Mr. McCain’s side, as had happened in 2001.

Mr. Kerry, reacting to reports in The Hill newspaper last year about Mr. Weaver’s 2001 approach to Mr. Downey, said he saw a pattern. “It doesn’t surprise me completely because his people similarly approached me to engage in a discussion about his potentially being on the ticket as vice president,” Mr. Kerry told Jonathan Singer of MyDD.com, a prominent liberal blog, in remarks that are available in an audio version online and that Mr. Kerry’s staff said last week were accurate. “So his people were active — let’s put it that way.”

Two former Kerry strategists said last week that Mr. Weaver went to Mr. Kerry’s house in Georgetown a short time after Mr. Kerry won the Democratic nomination in March and asked that Mr. Kerry consider Mr. McCain as his running mate. (Mr. Weaver said in his e-mail message that the idea had come from Mr. Kerry.)

I’m pretty skeptical about the McCain camp’s version of events, in large part because the Dems involved in the events have no reason to lie. (In contrast, McCain has already been caught lying, rather blatantly, about considering Kerry’s offer.)

As for the ‘08 implications, one can reasonably argue that the issue helps McCain. As the argument goes, he’s such a “maverick,” and his “independent” streak is so strong, he reached across the aisle in a major way during Bush’s first term.

But I have a different take. Far from showing McCain to be open-minded, I find these events to be a reminder of just how shallow McCain’s principles really are. When the winds were blowing in one direction, he was prepared to leave his party. When the winds shifted, he attached himself to the president he found offensive.

It’s hardly a compelling selling point.

Tagged as: mccain, kerry, election04, bush, democratic party, republican party

Steve Benen is a freelance writer/researcher and creator of The Carpetbagger Report. In addition, he is the lead editor of Salon.com's Blog Report, and has been a contributor to Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, Crooks & Liars, The American Prospect, and the Guardian.