For McCain, change begins with a 'No'

While visiting a nuclear power facility in Michigan last Tuesday, McCain responded to his opponent's commercial and the allegation that he was in the pocket of Big Oil by criticizing Obama's support for the energy bill: "I think he might be a little bit confused because when the energy bill came to the floor of the Senate, full of goodies and breaks for the oil companies, I voted against it. Senator Obama voted for it. People care not only what you say but how you vote."

By Thursday he had found a much pithier message, telling a crowd in Ohio, "I know he hasn't been in the Senate that long, but even in the real world, voting for something -- voting for something means you support it, and voting against something means you oppose it."

But the U.S. Senate isn't quite the "real world," and voting against something there doesn't always mean you oppose all of it -- especially when a bill is already certain to pass. In a place where compromise and concession are part and parcel of productivity, senators often feel forced to vote for bills they feel are less than perfect in order to achieve their ultimate goal. McCain is opposed to that practice.

"The system is so badly broken that they try to present us with a choice of voting for stuff that has pork barrel projects in it and some good things in it to force us to vote for them," McCain told reporters on his plane last week when asked about his opposition to the energy bill. "I have consistently voted against those kind of entrapments because then pork barrel projects and the good deals and the benefits never stop."

Obviously, McCain hasn't said "no" to every bill that contained earmarks. In fact, he's voted for specific earmarks that he regularly lambastes on the stump, including $3 million to study the DNA of bears in Montana (McCain often tells audiences that he isn't sure if that was "a paternity issue or a criminal issue"). Still, McCain prides himself on his record of voting against bills that he sees as the products of a "corrupt" system, often bragging about his earmark-free tenure in Congress and promising crowds that he will put an end to the practice if elected president.

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"Public money should serve the public good," McCain told a crowd at the Disabled American Veterans conference in Las Vegas last weekend. "And if it's me sitting in the Oval Office, at the Resolute desk, those wasteful spending bills are going the way of all earmarks, straight back to the Congress with a veto. And you will know their names and I'll make them famous."

Back on his campaign plane, McCain said that this is the fundamental difference between himself and Obama.

"There's a clear difference between someone who nearly a million dollars a day proposes pork barrel projects and therefore would support a bill that has lots of pork in it," McCain said, referring to the total value of Obama's requested earmarks. "Between those of us who are reformers, who are trying to fix the system and saying, no, no, we're not going to take the pork. We're not going to take the special-interest deals that ends up with people in federal prison, with people indicted, and there will be more indictments.... So it's a difference between the reformers and the 'go along to get along' system."

It's probably not fair to simply label Obama as a part of the "go along to get along" system, but his support of the 2005 energy bill suggest a willingness to play Washington's game for what he sees as a greater good -- or at least a "step" in the right direction. Although McCain has supported many compromises during his time in the Senate, and he has said that many of those bills did not turn out exactly as he would have written them, he has also been much more willing to vote against something because, in his view, the bad outweighed the good.

So despite the Obama campaign's reliance on buzzwords such as "hope" and "change," when it comes to reforming the system in Washington, Obama may actually be more of a pragmatist, while McCain may be the real idealist in the race.

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