Back to the Cold War?

Bill Waters | The New Mexican

5/9/2008 - 5/9/08

In the "catbird seat" is where some would say John McCain finds himself — or perhaps "sitting pretty." While Hillary Clinton "hangs in" despite hints that she'll soon be out of the Democratic presidential race and backing Barack Obama, Arizona's senior senator has long had the Republican field to himself.

Presumably, that would give him the leisure to build a solid campaign for November — and he has taken a few shots at Obama as the Illinois senator closes in on the nomination.

But in his zeal to regain — or even gain for the first time — the support of his party's right wing, he's doing something he surely learned not to do during his days at the United States Naval Academy: exposing his position.

As the maverick McCain tries portraying himself as a "true believer" in the things that got President Bush elected twice, it's as if he's building a thousand-foot antenna on an aircraft-carrier deck — sending messages that he's a whacko deserving of a second-place finish in the general election.

Yesterday we mentioned his pitch for a judiciary he'd like to load with more Antonin Scalias and Samuel Alitos — reason enough for our nation to go Democratic.

Even more sobering is his saber-rattling against Russia.

McCain's proposal to kick that country out of the "Group of Eight" leading industrial nations was part of his foreign-policy declarations earlier this spring. Whether it was another of his notorious plays to the gallery, or whether he really believes it should happen, it signaled to this country and the rest of the world that he wants us back in Cold War mode.

That long-past era might have given us a nice, clear sense of who the "enemy" is, as opposed to today's diplomatic chaos. But it also was a dangerous time, full of worry whether one leader of the two world powers would push the button annihilating both nations — and, for good measure, the rest of the world.

When Ronald Reagan stared down the Soviet Union with his willingness to escalate nuclear warpower into a "Star Wars" contest, he won the Cold War on economics: The Soviets couldn't afford the trillions of dollars the new technology would have cost. Whether or not we could was another matter — but it prompted new thinking in Moscow, and better relations with the West.

Whether the "Group of Seven" should have been in such a rush to recruit a less-than-democratic Russia might be open to question. But it's a done deal a President McCain can't undo: The countries close to Russia — Germany, France, Italy and Great Britain — don't want a return to the bad old days; neither do two others of the old "G7" — Canada and Japan.

So McCain's crude attempt to woo neoconservatives has all the general appeal of those billboards saying "Get US out of the UN!"

Once there's a Democratic candidate, and the intra-party sniping between Clinton and Obama dies down, McCain is likely to come under considerably more scrutiny than he's gotten so far. He's got some heavy baggage in Arizona, and now he's adding some national and international burdens: More about them in the months to come.

So maybe the catbird seat isn't so comfortable: Relaxing in it and saying little could cost him some attention. Sitting up and speaking silliness puts him in the sights of opposition shotguns.