10-21-2008, 03:35 AM
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What kind of president would McCain be?
This is speculation by political historians/researchers of what a McCain whitehouse might look like:
Quote:
A rabble-rouser from his earliest days, John McCain has never been one who likes to be told "no." There's no reason to think a President McCain would be any different.McCain styles himself as a Teddy Roosevelt Republican, eager to be in the arena. If elected, he could be expected to pick certain issues and push them to the limit. Look for him to throw down the gauntlet in a few high-profile battles — vetoing legislation larded with pork-barrel projects, for example.
He'd plant his feet firmly in resisting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. He'd try to give people new tax credits for health insurance and — in a first for a Republican president — move to deal aggressively with global warming even while opening more offshore waters to oil drilling.
"He's going to have to truly be the maverick McCain who takes on his own party," said Darrell West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. "He will not be able to govern as a conservative Republican."
"If he compromises too much with the Democrats, he'll face a grass-roots rebellion from conservative activists who were always suspicious that McCain is not one of them
"We need to change the way government does almost everything."
McCain's good friend Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, envisions McCain using the presidency in a big way.
"Man, would we do a lot if he got to be president," Graham says. "He would push Congress to do things it should've done 20 years ago."
For all that bullish talk, though, McCain knows he will have to display a measure of pragmatism.
Even McCain's promises to cut government spending would be tougher to fulfill because of the economic mess, Smith said, because "it doesn't make a lot of sense economically, when we might be headed into a recession, to radically reduce the federal deficit."
McCain is more comfortable dealing with foreign policy than domestic affairs, and he'd have a freer hand there.
He refuses to set a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, and pledges unspecified troop increases in Afghanistan
McCain could be expected to take a strong stand on a few symbolic issues and willingly delegate other major policy matters.
Despite McCain's many campaign promises...(political historians and researchers) can see a presidency like Eisenhower's, a sort of senior statesman capping his career as president without much of an agenda to do anything and not pushing very far on policy initiatives.
McCain would be afflicted with the same malady as Richard Nixon, who savored foreign policy but was less interested in the budget and other domestic matters.
McCain, on one issue or another... may...try to come up with surprise agreements. That could help McCain set the agenda in a way that makes it difficult for opponents to take it in a different direction.
And given McCain's advanced age, speculation would be strong from Day One about whether he'd seek re-election. That could portend an even more independent Senate, with lots of jockeying by potential presidential candidates for 2012.
...McCain working with Palin in a way that is akin to how the first President George H. W. Bush used Vice President Dan Quayle — delegating broad responsibility in a few specific areas rather than relying on the vice president to serve as an all-purpose adviser in the style of vice presidents Dick Cheney or Al Gore
That means McCain could end up leaning more heavily on his secretaries of State and Defense. He has promised to include Democrats in his Cabinet, and his friend Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent, also has been the subject of speculation for a Cabinet slot.
What kind of president would McCain be? - John McCain News - MSNBC.com
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