It is now apparent which tawdry line of attack the Democratic nominee, either the compulsive falsifier Hillary Clinton or the courtier of racists and terrorists Barack Obama, will employ against John McCain during the general election. It is embodied in insipid applause lines like the “Bush-McCain economy” or the “Bush-McCain war” that scintillate clamorous throngs of Bush-haters whilst sodomizing the record. But there is no other Republican of national stature whose differences with President Bush on major policies are so public and so pronounced.

            The number of issues on which McCain departs from Republican orthodoxy belies the claims that he is a typical conservative or a clone of President Bush. McCain supports expanded federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, the reimportation of discounted prescription medicine from Canada, the ability of Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower costs, a patient’s bill of rights with a provision for legal recourse when medical care is denied, climate change legislation that mandates decreased greenhouse gas emissions and higher fuel efficiency standards, and additional campaign finance reform to vanquish the corrupt influence of money in politics.

            McCain has assembled bipartisan coalitions in the Senate during the last seven years when acrimony and gridlock would have otherwise prevailed. For instance: the McCain-Edwards-Kennedy Patient’s Bill of Rights, the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, and the McCain-Kennedy Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act. His sponsorship of each of these bills enraged conservatives and jeopardized his position within the Republican Party, but he refused to let partisan allegiance thwart the need to compromise.

            McCain and President Bush have been closely associated in their views on national security, but they actually have wide differences. McCain has been the Senate’s leading advocate of banning torture and insisting the US comply with the Geneva Conventions pertaining to the treatment of enemy combatants. He has repeatedly promised to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. His ardent support of the War in Iraq should not be taken as having assented to its conduct, as he tirelessly criticized Donald Rumsfeld’s braggadocious ineptitude and called for more soldiers to be sent to Iraq to stabilize the country. McCain’s foresighted advocacy of the surge has been vindicated by its beneficent effects on military and civilian casualties.

            In this campaign change has come to encompass the public’s determination to see overturned the typical manners and mores in Washington. Clinton’s claim to change is yawningly hollow, but some people actually believe Obama can revolutionize politics through heavenly intonations and the pigmentation of his skin. The most cited accomplishment in Obama’s puny, abbreviated résumé is a tepid, hand-me-down version of a stronger ethics bill that McCain endorsed. McCain wanted legislation to prohibit earmarks, the wasteful, corrupting phenomenon whereby legislators subtly purchase reelection, but it was not until he became the apparent Republican nominee that Obama warmed to the idea. McCain has abjured personal attacks and is committed, even as Obama recants this same vow, to a publicly financed general election campaign without the billion-dollar deluge of negative ads. The faddish supplicants to Obama’s policy-starved messianism should, if they have a genuine interest in change, support McCain, for his is the candidacy of proven, substantial change, not platitudinous orations that mask the foolish hopes of an ingénue.