Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

It’s now been confirmed by the Justice Department itself that essentially every hiring there in the past eight years is suspect. They explicitly screen candidates for their political views, put a hack in charge of doing it, fired good USAs because they weren’t following their politically minded prosecution goals and then lied about it. So the question comes, what are we supposed to do about it? Sure, trying to debar Monica Goodling and put more legal heat on Alberto Gonzalez is a good idea, but it doesn’t address the central question: how to get the rot out of the Justice Department so it can actually function as an effective branch of government?

But when Obama tries to do this, just about every lame mainstream columnist will say he’s being overly vindicative and divisive. Also, he could piss off Republicans even more so that they will put up a stronger fight against his fairly ambitious first term agenda (global warming, health care, withdrawing from Iraq). I don’t think he’ll want to take a lot of heat for what can be portrayed as a petty bureaucratic manner.

This does, however, leave a huge opening for John McCain. If he were to promise to make one of his priorities the “professionalism and honor” government, and then make signals that this means going after the Bush justice department, he would be able to separate himself from Bush, not particularly anger the Base (they’ve abandoned Fredo) and get him back on his reformist/mavericky tread, where he’s clearly more comfortable.

And even if the above scenario is rather unlikely, it helps show that a real McCain administration could interact pretty oddly with a Democratic congress. When you look at the last time this happened (Clinton after 1994), they were able to pass the stuff they agreed on (relatively conservative budgets, welfare reform, DOMA, NAFTA). And in the case of NAFTA, it was a few Democrats plus most Republicans. So what are those issues with McCain? I think cap-and-trade would be one of them, and maybe some sort of health care reform (perhaps covering catastrophic health care costs?). What’s weird is that this is the only way a McCain administration could possibly govern. But his campaign, and much of the punditry surrounding it (including mine) is totally ignoring the only feasible reality for actual McCain governance. And although I think it’s important document how awful McCain’s fiscal policy is, but there’s also no chance that it will get passed.

So maybe we should only talk about McCain’s foreign policy, where the president has the most influence, and where he, specifically, will be able to most easily overwhelm the preferences of a Democratic Congress.