John McCain follies

I was readying to write about an immigration article I found interesting and then a TARP article I found depressing, but then I realized that both articles were actually about John McCain and I could cover them in one post.

The first is by Joanna Lydgate, and it examines the border-security bill McCain is pushing now that he's decided to stop supporting the comprehensive approach to immigration reform that he once understood to be necessary. It includes an expansion of Project Streamline, a policy aimed at criminally prosecuting and imprisoning every illegal immigrant picked up by authorities. Lydgate, who's studied Operation Streamline, has found the program to be a mess: It forces the legal system to spend its time on nonviolent offenders and erodes its capacity to focus on violent offenses.

"Federal prosecutors no longer get to choose which immigrants to prosecute; they must prosecute everyone," writes Lydgate. "As a result, nonviolent border crossers are clogging up federal courts and straining the resources of judges, attorneys, U.S. marshals and court personnel. From 2002 to 2009, federal magistrate judges along the U.S.-Mexico border saw their misdemeanor immigration caseloads skyrocket. Criminal prosecutions of petty immigration-related offenses increased by more than 340% in the border district courts." Meanwhile, "organized-crime prosecutions and drug prosecutions declined by 20%, and weapons prosecutions fell by 19%." With a drug war raging in Mexico, this is a terrible diversion of judicial and legal resources.

The second article sees John McCain selling TARP down the river. "They deceived the American people," McCain said. "They said it would go to address the housing issue, instead they gave it to the financial institutions."

Come again? I remember when McCain suspended the campaign to go back and work on TARP. I knew TARP was aimed at providing money to the banks. And I knew that because Hank Paulson said that. “The federal government must implement a program to remove these illiquid assets that are weighing down our financial institutions and threatening our economy," Paulson said in his statement explaining the program. "I am convinced that this bold approach will cost American families far less than the alternative — a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets unable to fund economic expansion." You'll notice he did not say "a continuing series of foreclosures."

Either McCain didn't understand the program, which would be scary, or he's misrepresenting his understanding of the program, which would be sad. In the latter case, the excuse for both these panders is probably that JD Hayworth is running a primary against McCain in Arizona. Straight talk, it seems, is for presidential elections, not statewide primaries.

But I have no sympathy for McCain when it comes to the Hayworth challenge. In sacrificing his independent streak to win the Republican nomination and in launching Sarah Palin onto the national stage, McCain encouraged the viciously ideological conservatism that now threatens to destroy him. He might not have started this, but he did not fight against it when it counted. And now he's submitting to it entirely, if somewhat unconvincingly.

Photo credit: By Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

