One of the funnier press tics of this campaign is when reporters rend themselves in two, agonizing over completely contrived complexity that they imagine exists inside John McCain. Today’s NYT has the latest example, a 1,600 word thumbsucker about how McCain is buffeted between two discrete factions of his foreign policy advisers. It’s complete, unadulterated nonsense.
The narrative Elisabeth Bumiller and Larry Rohter are advancing is that Senator McCain has two different factions within his foreign policy advisory: dyed-in-the-wool war-loving neocons like Max Boot and Robert Kagan on the one hand, and on the other hand, “pragmatists” who are later described in the article as “realists,” best characterized by people like Henry Kissinger, Lawrence Eagleburger, and Richard Armitage. According to Bumiller and Rohter, there are big differences between the two camps.
There are degrees of difference among these advisers, to be sure, but to imply that they represent fundamentally different camps is completely inaccurate. First off, there’s a big difference between academic realists, who overwhelmingly opposed the war in Iraq before it started, and most people who gallivant around the Beltway proclaiming themselves realists. (Beware, in particular, anyone who uses realist with a modifier, as in “idealistic realist.” Only accept the genuine article.) A huge majority of the Beltway foreign policy establishment–including every member except one of the “pragmatist” faction in the Times story–promoted the war and still have failed to grasp the reasons for its failure.
Bumiller and Rohter then roll out the one prominent figure within the DC foreign policy establishment who did oppose the war, Brent Scowcroft, Bush père’s national security adviser. They describe his opposition to the war and list him as a member of the realist camp within McCain’s advisory. But here’s the thing: If Bumiller and Rohter had dug around a bit, they could have discovered that McCain consigliere Randy Scheunemann, famous for his stalwart promotion of Iraqi charlatan Ahmed Chalabi (a topic that goes totally unexplored in the piece) told the New York Sun in 2006 that “I don’t think, given where John has been for the last four or five years on the Iraq war and foreign policy issues, anyone would mistake Scowcroft for a close adviser.”
Reading the Times piece, you’d believe that there are the war-crazed neocons on the one hand, and the prudent anti-war realists on the other hand. In reality, you have the war-crazed neocons on the one hand, and pro-war realists like Henry Kissinger (who is pro-war first and a realist second) on the other. They present Scowcroft, the one opponent of the war, in order to create the impression that there’s a difference of views on the question, but then fail to mention that he’s been dismissed as a peripheral figure by McCain’s closest foreign policy adviser.
I don’t know whether the Times is trying to make up for the Vicki Iseman story with this, but it makes John McCain look a lot less wedded to perpetual war than anybody who’s been paying attention could easily tell you.
