October, 2008:

Charles Krauthammer: Why I’m voting for McCain

12:00 PM CDT on Friday, October 24, 2008

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 ˆ neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) ˆ 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.

First, I’ll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The “erratic” temperament issue, for example. As if Mr. McCain’s risky and unsuccessful ˆ but in no way irrational ˆ attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders him unfit for office. This man has demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and he has steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.

Nor will I countenance the “dirty campaign” pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Mr. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating Mr. McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed Mr. McCain supports “cutting Social Security benefits in half.” And for months, Democrats insisted that Mr. McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

Mr. McCain’s critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What’s astonishing is that Mr. Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, Mr. McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Mr. Obama’s most egregious association ˆ with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

The case for Mr. 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.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who’s been cramming on these issues for the last year, who’s never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of “a world that stands as one”), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as “the tragedy of 9/11,” a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the U.S. Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

Today’s economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

Charles Krauthammer is a Washington Post columnist.