Pro-McCain pundit will go down with ship

by Frank James

Just in case some thought Charles Krauthammer had gone all wobbly, like some other well-known conservatives, for Sen. Barack Obama, the columnist has come out four-square for Sen. John McCain.

Those who thought Krauthammer had jumped ship could be forgiven. After all, he said some very complimentary things about Obama in a column earlier this month. "... He's got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president," he wrote in a column about Obama and McCain earlier this month.

But in Krauthammer's latest column, he makes clear where his loyalties lie.

An excerpt:

Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe -- neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) -- yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

(Seems like it takes more than a little shoe-horning to put Powell in a list of conservatives.)

The core of Krauthammer's argument for McCain is that voters should get over the economic and financial crises since they're transitory anyway. Instead, they should focus totally on national security.

Even McCain, the beneficiary of this argument, knows enough not to make this case publicly. Sure, the senator for Arizona's long suit is national security policy. But when the nation is facing arguably the worse economic crisis since the Great Depression, it's too much to expect that Americans aren't going to put their economic well being at the center of their concerns.

Regardless, Krauthammer essentially thinks Americans, this nation of whiners, should just get over this economic navel gazing and vote based on more existential issues.

Another excerpt:

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate?...

For Americans with a measure job security, like quite a few brand name Washington pundits, it's easier to base the decision on whom to vote for on foreign policy and security concerns.

For everyone else worried about potentially being laid off, however, the prevailing economic anxieties are a real preoccupation as they decide who to vote for.

In the eyes of such voters, an argument like Krauthammer's may inadvertently undercut McCain's candidacy since it so completely dismisses the Republican nominee's assertions of recent weeks that he's just the man to fix the economy.