[Peace-discuss] Would you rather have McCain?

[C. G. Estabrook]

"...many of these appointments [McCain] would have made himself ... Obama does 
not want to be the guy who lost Iraq when it is close to being won..."

	New York Times - January 19, 2009
	Obama Reaches Out for McCain’s Counsel
	By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON — Not long after Senator John McCain returned last month
from an official trip to Iraq and Pakistan, he received a phone call
from President-elect Barack Obama.

As contenders for the presidency, the two had hammered each other for
much of 2008 over their conflicting approaches to foreign policy,
especially in Iraq. (He’d lose a war! He’d stay a hundred years!) Now,
however, Mr. Obama said he wanted Mr. McCain’s advice, people in each
camp briefed on the conversation said. What did he see on the trip?
What did he learn?

It was just one step in a post-election courtship that historians say
has few modern parallels, beginning with a private meeting in Mr.
Obama’s transition office in Chicago just two weeks after the vote. On
Monday night, Mr. McCain will be the guest of honor at a black-tie
dinner celebrating Mr. Obama’s inauguration.

Over the last three months, Mr. Obama has quietly consulted Mr. McCain
about many of the new administration’s potential nominees to top
national security jobs and about other issues — in one case relaying
back a contender’s answers to questions Mr. McCain had suggested.

Mr. McCain, meanwhile, has told colleagues “that many of these
appointments he would have made himself,” said Senator Lindsey Graham,
a South Carolina Republican and a close McCain friend.

Fred I. Greenstein, emeritus professor of politics at Princeton, said:
“I don’t think there is a precedent for this. Sometimes there is bad
blood, sometimes there is so-so blood, but rarely is there good blood.”

It is “trademark Obama,” Professor Greenstein said, noting that Mr.
Obama’s impulse to win over even ideological opposites appeared to
date at least to his friendships with conservatives on The Harvard Law
Review when he was president.

For Mr. Obama, cooperation with his defeated opponent could also
provide a useful ally in the Senate, where Mr. McCain has parlayed his
national popularity and go-his-own-way reputation into a role as a
pivotal dealmaker over the last eight years. But on the subject of
Iraq, in particular, their collaboration could also raise questions
among Mr. Obama’s liberal supporters, many of whom demonized Mr.
McCain as a dangerous warmonger because of his staunch opposition to a
pullout.

Mr. Obama arrived for their Chicago meeting on Nov. 16 with several
well-researched proposals to collaborate on involving some of Mr.
McCain’s favorite causes, including a commission to cut “corporate
welfare,” curbing waste in military procurement and an overhaul of
immigration rules.

“The corporate welfare commission and military acquisition reform are
two things the president-elect wants to do very soon,” Rahm Emanuel,
Mr. Obama’s chief of staff and a participant in the meeting, said in
an interview. The new administration is already preparing to introduce
legislation echoing a previous McCain bill on the commission idea, Mr.
Emanuel said, adding, “We have been very respectful and solicitous of
his ideas.”

Mr. Emanuel said he did not remember any discussion of Iraq. “Barack
has been clear that he is going to stick to his responsible reduction
in forces, and he hasn’t changed from that,” he said.

But Mr. Graham, who accompanied Mr. McCain to the meeting, said Mr.
Obama took a notably different tone toward Iraq than he had during the
campaign, emphasizing the common ground in their views.

“He said that he understands that we had differences but he wanted to
let us know that he also understands that we have got to be
responsible in how we leave Iraq,” Mr. Graham recalled. “What the
Obama-Biden administration has talked about is not losing the gains we
have achieved. ”

He added, “Obama does not want to be the guy who lost Iraq when it is
close to being won.”

Mr. Emanuel, whose only previous contact with Mr. Graham was
negotiating the terms of the presidential debates, began calling him
more than once a week to follow up. “Constantly,” Mr. Emanuel said.
“There has been a running dialogue.”

Mr. Graham, in turn, called his counterpart “a pleasure to do business
with.”

Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., a friend since Mr. McCain
was the Navy’s liaison to the Senate three decades ago, has also
played intermediary. He called Mr. McCain to ask him to appear at the
inaugural dinner, and he invited Mr. Graham on another recent trip to
Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I know the vice president-elect is very concerned about the end game
in Iraq,” Mr. Graham said.

Some Senate Democrats have complained that Mr. Obama failed to seek
their contributions about certain appointments — notably Leon E.
Panetta as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. But the Obama
transition team has consistently sought advice and feedback from Mr.
McCain, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, on
national security appointments, Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Graham both said.

Mr. Graham said Mr. McCain had enthusiastically supported those
appointments: Gen. James L. Jones (an old McCain friend) as national
security adviser; Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the retired Army chief of
staff, as secretary of veterans affairs; Hillary Rodham Clinton as
secretary of state; and most of all, retaining Secretary of Defense
Robert M. Gates.

“Picking Gates is a good statement that they are not going to pull out
of Iraq in a way that undercuts the gains achieved,” Mr. Graham said.

And when Mr. McCain raised “concerns” about the potential choice of
Adm. Dennis C. Blair as director of national intelligence, Mr. Emanuel
said, Mr. Obama’s advisers asked the admiral to provide answers to Mr.
McCain’s questions to win his support. (Neither side would disclose
the details of Mr. McCain’s concerns, but Admiral Blair has faced past
questions about his relations with the military dictators of Indonesia
when he was in the Navy, and a possible conflict of interest when he
later worked with a nonprofit group evaluating weapons systems.)

“We gave McCain time to talk through it, made sure he was briefed,”
Mr. Emanuel said.

Mr. Obama’s cultivation of Mr. McCain is a stark contrast with the
practices of past presidents. After the 2004 election, President Bush
did not talk to his defeated opponent, Senator John Kerry of
Massachusetts, until Mr. Kerry visited the White House in March 2005
as part of a large group to celebrate the Red Sox victory in the World
Series. (“I like to see Senator Kerry,” Mr. Bush said, “except when
we’re fixing to debate.”) And after Mr. Bush defeated Mr. McCain for
the Republican nomination in 2000, the two had only perfunctory
contact and often-adversarial relations for nearly two years.

Shortly before his second inauguration, former President Bill Clinton
awarded his defeated opponent, Bob Dole, the Medal of Freedom. But it
was an entirely ceremonial event. (Mr. Dole joked that had hoped to be
at the White House picking up “the front door key” instead.)

A spokeswoman for Mr. McCain did not respond to several messages. But
Mr. Graham said he and Mr. McCain were convinced that Mr. Obama was
genuinely interested in working together with them on both domestic
priorities and foreign policy.

“Not only is it good politics,” Mr. Graham said, “it gives you an
insight into who we are dealing with.”

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/us/politics/19mccain.html>