McCain the Flip-Flopper

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 8:26 AM on May 16, 2008.

Soon after the president told the Israeli Knesset that Democrats are Chamberlain-like appeasers because Obama is prepared to talk to Iran (just as Bush’s own Defense Secretary and Secretary of State have recommended), John McCain jumped on the far-right bandwagon. Aboard his campaign bus, McCain told reporters Obama’s willingness to negotiate with rival heads of state reflects “naivete and inexperience and lack of judgment.”

As it turns out, however, two years ago, McCain was prepared to go even further than Obama. While Obama is willing to try diplomacy with Iran, McCain has expressed interest in possibly even negotiating Hamas.

Jamie Rubin, a former assistant secretary of state, the State Department’s chief spokesman during the Clinton administration, and an active supporter of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, has the story.

[G]iven his own position on Hamas, McCain is the last politician who should be attacking Obama. Two years ago, just after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections, I interviewed McCain for the British network Sky News’s “World News Tonight” program. Here is the crucial part of our exchange:

I asked: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

McCain answered: “They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

For some Europeans in Davos, Switzerland, where the interview took place, that’s a perfectly reasonable answer. But it is an unusual if not unique response for an American politician from either party. And it is most certainly not how the newly conservative presumptive Republican nominee would reply today.

So, while Clinton and Obama have said Hamas’ leadership needs to its their policies towards Israel before the U.S. will sit down at the table with them, McCain has publicly expressed a willingness to embrace Hamas, at least diplomatically, without this precondition.

The irony is rich. McCain has been shamelessly attacking Obama for being open to talking to terrorists like Hamas. Obama didn’t say that he would — but McCain did.

In other words, yesterday, Bush told Israeli lawmakers, “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals.” He was, perhaps inadvertently, talking about McCain.

Obama believes we should engage foreign heads of state, but not terrorists. McCain believes we should engage terrorists, but not foreign heads of state.

Remind me again which candidate is burdened by “naivete and inexperience and lack of judgment”?

Oddly enough, as McCain has been working the Hamas smear against Obama, he boasts that Hamas “sure isn’t going to support me.” McCain tends to chuckle to himself every time he says this, as if it’s obvious that Hamas would prefer Obama.

It’s always been a rather inane claim, not the least of which is because Hamas has benefited quite extensively from Bush administration policies, which McCain seems anxious to continue. But now it’s slightly worse — given that McCain is open to dealing with Hamas as a legitimate government, and Obama isn’t, which one of the candidates do you suppose Hamas would prefer?

Rubin added:

Given that exchange, the new John McCain might say that Hamas should be rooting for the old John McCain to win the presidential election. The old John McCain, it appears, was ready to do business with a Hamas-led government, while both Clinton and Obama have said that Hamas must change its policies toward Israel and terrorism before it can have diplomatic relations with the United States.

Even if McCain had not favored doing business with Hamas two years ago, he had no business smearing Barack Obama. But given his stated position then, it is either the height of hypocrisy or a case of political amnesia for McCain to inject Hamas into the American election.

The Huffington Post has the video of Rubin’s interview with McCain. Expect to hear a lot more about it.

Tagged as: john mccain, hamas