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Hi Rich,
“Heaven knows I can be critical of John McCain, but I think calling him “increasingly unstable” is very unfair.”
… I thought I’d write and ask you to consider (and share with The Corner if you’d like) what strikes me as an important point. It seems clear that he is shooting himself in the foot politically with his stand on interrogations. All his hard work reconciling himself to the conservative base could go down the drain. Yet he persists, almost surely on principle. Isn’t that incredibly admirable? Can you name one other likely candidate for either party’s presidential nomination who has stood on principle even when it hurt politically? As you dump on McCain for taking a position with which you disagree, shouldn’t you be praising his integrity?

ME: Yes, he believes what he’s saying, which is admirable, and he must know it’s not helping him with conservatives, which is brave. But it’s more complicated than that. I wish he’d be more forthright about what he’s effectively been doing, which is trying to ban any coercive method whatsoever, even including the shaking and slapping that even the most hyperbolic opponents of coercive interrogations support (and that isn’t allowed under the new Army Field Manual). Also, he says he supports the CIA program, which is bizarre given his general posture. Finally, judging by his past statements, he wants interrogators to put their careers on the line by breaking the law to defend America in a “ticking time bomb” scenario, which I think is wrong of him and perhaps even dishonorable. If he supports tough methods to save American lives, he should put himself and the Congress four-square behind those methods so interrogators have no doubt that what they’re doing has political and legal sanction, instead of hoping that some brave guy is willing to put his career, family, reputation, and finances on the line when push comes to shove and he has to ignore what McCain and Co. have been trying to do recently. (As I wrote in this column the other day, I think the closest you get to a ticking time-bomb scenario in real life is when you catch someone like KSM.)