Hat vs. Hat

Some unintentional candor, revealing the speaker’s belief in an irreconcilable, binary opposition:

“I want to thank my fellow Republicans as we take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats and say, America we are with you and we are going to care about these people in their time of need.”

— Sen. John McCain, Republican presidential candidate, on plans to downscale the Republican National Convention as Hurricane Gustav approaches the Gulf Coast.

A variation of this also appears on a splash page at McCain’s Web site:

“We will act as Americans and not as Republicans because America needs us now.”

Two different hats. One of them, McCain says, is appropriate for caring “about people in their time of need.” The other, McCain says, must be removed in order to do what America needs.

Two separate hats. And, McCain insists, they can’t be worn at the same time.

Actually, that explains a lot.

To his credit McCain has, with only a little self-congratulatory ostentation,* replaced his Web site’s usual donation page with links to the American Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity and other charities that will be helping the victims of Hurricane Gustav. That’s a Good Thing and McCain deserves unqualified praise for doing that (as does his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, who has done the same thing).

But I’m struck by the duality and opposition revealed in McCain’s hat metaphor.

Hat one or hat two. To put either on one must remove the other. His instinct was that he could respond to Hurricane Gustav either as a Republican or else as an American, but that he could not do both. The “American hat” response, McCain says, is “to care about these people in their time of need.” And to his credit, McCain has chosen that American hat response instead of its opposite, but how strange that he would suggest or admit that the “Republican hat” response would be its opposite.

Or maybe John McCain was just remembering which hat he was wearing when Hurricane Katrina made landfall.

But hold that thought.

Earlier yesterday, on Fox News Sunday, McCain did another Good Thing. Or at least he said another Good Thing. He said this:

“Waterboarding to me is torture, okay? And waterboarding was advocated by the administration, and according to a published report, was used,” McCain said. “I obviously don’t want to torture any prisoners.”

Apart from a bit of subjective hedging, that’s a forcefully blunt condemnation of torture and a refreshing rejection of the Bush administration’s (and Fox News’) use of Orwellian euphemisms such as “harsh interrogation techniques.” He calls torture “torture,” and he stands against it.

McCain’s opposition to torture was one area in which he previously had my respect. He chose to toss away that respect by reversing himself, supporting President Bush’s veto of a measure to ban waterboarding by the CIA.

That was back in February, when McCain was still losing to Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee in Republican primaries. To beat them, he realized, he would need to put on his “Republican hat,” and go along with the Bush administration’s advocacy of waterboarding. McCain was willing to do that, even though, in his eyes, that required him to take off his “American hat,” to set aside his convictions, and to endorse Bush’s waterboarding policy.

It seems to me that McCain found that choice distasteful. The choice itself — the fact that he would be forced to choose — he found distasteful. But even more distasteful, I think, was the realization that he was willing to make it. That may have been, for McCain, the worst such occasion in which his ambition led him to reverse himself in pursuit of his party’s nomination. But it was far from the only such occasion. One result, I think, is that this is how McCain has come to view his affiliation with his party — as a kind of “hat” that one must sometimes wear instead of the “American hat.”

This exchanging of hats carries echoes of an earlier exchange — the one that launched, and perhaps shaped, McCain’s political career. McCain recently spoke of that exchange as “my greatest moral failure.” Another choice on the side of ambition and another choice he views, perhaps, with distaste.

Distaste, but not regret. He’s not comfortable with those choices, but without them he wouldn’t be where he is today and he very much wants to be where he is today. So John McCain, I think, resents the Republican hat. But he’ll still put it on when he has to if he thinks it’ll help him get where he wants to be.

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* The ostentatious self-congratulation has been delegated to McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis, who clumsily fails to realize that one can’t claim credit for not politicizing a potential tragedy by jumping up and down and shouting “Look at me! Look at me! See how I’m not politicizing the tragedy? Aren’t I noble? Tell all your friends about how I’m not seeking credit at all, just selflessly doing the right thing!”