It’s not surprising that David Brooks comes to the aid of John McCain in today’s New York Times, detailing the Arizona Senator’s efforts for reform in the areas of telecom law, tobacco settlements, ethanol subsidies, campaign finance reform, climage change (urgh), Pentagon waste, Jack Abramoff, and earmarks.

This is, of course, the gospel of the mediocre man: to ridicule somebody who tries something difficult on the grounds that the effort was not a total success. But any decent person who looks at the McCain record sees that while he has certainly faltered at times, he has also battled concentrated power more doggedly than any other legislator. If this is the record of a candidate with lobbyists on his campaign bus, then every candidate should have lobbyists on the bus.

But I was a little surprised by the line, “We’re going to have two extraordinary nominees for president this year. This could be one of the great general election campaigns in American history.”

I give credit to Obama for his work with Tom Coburn on tracking pork-barrel spending. (McCain also cosponsored the bill.) Beyond that… in his three years and change, Obama hasn’t done much for the cause of reform.

We’re going to see Obama promise a heck of a lot that he has, so far, not demonstrated an ability to get done; he’ll argue that he can only accomplish these goals as head of the executive branch. McCain, on the other hand, plugs away, year after year, whether the outlook is good or bad.

(By the way, notice that Hillary Clinton isn’t even an afterthought in the column. Another bad omen for her.)