Rebel without a map

I never quite understood why John McCain considered maverick-hood for its own sake to be a virtue.

The Arizona senator's embrace of the "maverick" label failed, in part, because it's one of those terms that loses currency when one applies it to oneself. It might have seemed kind of edgy and cool to have the campaign's surrogates describing McCain as a maverick, but when he used the word to describe himself it came across as a bit too eager to please. It reminded me, somehow, of Pee Wee's Big Adventure — "I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel."

The bigger problem with the maverick theme, though, was that it's a contentless term. To be a maverick might be good or it might be bad, depending on what it is that one is gettin' all mavericky about. If someone told me, for example, that my step-daughters' school bus driver was a "maverick," I don't think I'd consider that a Good Thing.

This was reinforced by a parallel emphasis in McCain's standard stump speeches in which he criticized Barack Obama for not having a long history of contradicting his own party. McCain seemed to assume that contradicting one's own party was always and inherently the right thing to do. But that doesn't make any sense. If one's party is in the wrong, then standing up against them would be the right thing to do. But if one's party is not in the wrong, then there's no virtue in contradicting them.

The idea that I think McCain was reaching for in all of this was to contrast the idea of a person of principle with the idea of unprincipled partisanship. That could have been a powerful argument, but McCain seemed not to understand the essence of it. He wasn't presenting himself as a man of principles and deep convictions who stood by those principles and convictions even when doing so put him at odds with his own party. Instead he seemed to be arguing that being at odds with one's own party was somehow, in itself, a virtuous position. He wasn't arguing that he was a maverick in service of some larger set of principles — to McCain, being a maverick was the larger principle.

When this argument moved from the general to the particular, it got even worse for McCain. The examples he provided of instances where he was willing to buck his own party were all cases where I think he was right to do so. He opposed the Bush administration's support for torture; he opposed restrictions on stem-cell research; he accepted that climate change was a real problem that couldn't be ignored. McCain liked to point out that while he was willing to criticize the Republican position on all of those issues, Barack Obama never stood up to criticize the Democratic Party for where it stood on torture, or stem-cell research, or climate change. This was a surreal argument from McCain — one it was impossible to make any sense of until one realized that, for McCain, rebellion and maverickitude were the highest virtues.

For McCain, the content or the cause of that rebellion mattered less than the fact that one rebelled. There was no reason for Obama to rebel against his own party on torture, or stem-cell research, or climate change, because Obama believed that his party was right about all those issues. Obama's agreement with the party line was not unprincipled — the party line was in accord with his principles. John McCain's once-frequent disagreements with his own party were evidence either that his party was frequently wrong on the issues, or else that he had cast his lot with the wrong party — with a party that was frequently opposed to his own principles. Either way, it reflected badly on John McCain. That Barack Obama did not face a similar dilemma was a credit both to him and to his party.

The principled politician must be prepared to stand by their principles even if doing so should place them at odds with their own party or their own constituents. Such principled stands were the subject of John F. Kennedy's book Profiles in Courage. McCain's maverick mantra, however, seemed not to be calling for profiles in courage, but for profiles in contrariness for its own sake. His opposition to his own party thus seemed less about the substance of each case than about his own willingness, or eagerness, to take a maverick stance. This was sadly demonstrated in each of the instances mentioned here by McCain's eventual willingness to get back in line, ultimately supporting the very positions on torture, stem-cell research and (less absolutely) climate change that he had previously opposed. Having re-established his maverick credentials in each case, his agenda was complete and he was willing to yield the substance and the principle at stake on each of those issues.

McCain's confusion about the meaning of mavericity is resurfacing now in mirror-image form in the coalescing conventional wisdom that President-elect Barack Obama "must," above all, seek to govern in a "bipartisan" fashion.

McCain seemed to think that being a maverick was a virtue in itself and thus elevated the refusal to compromise above the substance of the principles about which one ought to refuse to compromise. In doing so, he confused the ends and the means. That same confusion underlies this talk of the paramount importance of bipartisanship. Bipartisanship and the willingness to compromise for the greater good may be necessary means, but they are not, in themselves, the ends or the ultimate principles or goals at stake. Elevating bipartisanship for its own sake above those ultimate principles and goals is the obverse of McCain's error in elevating contrariness above them.

I don't want a leader who thinks being a maverick is, in itself, the cardinal virtue. Nor do I want a leader who thinks that bipartisanship is, in itself, the highest good. I want a leader who doesn't confuse means and ends.

The good news is that I think maybe I have such a leader.