Last week, I had an email exchange with a couple of my rabidly anti-Bush friends about the speculation that Kerry was considering Mccain as either his VP or Secretary of Defense (SOD).   My immediate response (sliced & diced from email) -

----- Original Message -----

From: Vinod Valloppillil

To: xxxxxx

Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 3:31 PM

check this out - Decrying Iraq, Kerry Cites McCain for Defense Chief

Combined w/ the other "what Kerry Must say" stuff on my blog (here)... This would be so friggin' cool. Sec/Defense in today's world is (often) a more important post than VP. (of course, a lot of stuff can still happen b/t now and November).

Mccain is a stud.

...I have mega respect for [Mccain] - he's very "Say what I mean ; Mean what I say" and would be a perfect antidote to Kerry's perceived wishy-washiness.

---

>>would you vote for kerry + mccain ticket?

on balance & with some caveats.... YES -

• mixed whitehouse + congress = fiscal restraint  (here, for ex)
• mccain would still prosecute the war
• kerry would get NATO allies over their "I'd rather hurt Bush than save Iraq" hump

Now most of my friends can't fathom voting for Bush, think the Iraq campaign is fatally flawed, and consider the Patriot Act step 1 towards Stalinism.  Against this backdrop, my issue-by-issue equivocation towards Bush comes across as a raving endorsement so I think they were / are surprised by how seriously I consider voting for Kerry in this very hypothetical conversation.  [of course, there are still questions about the extent Kerry would allow Mccain's hawkishness to help form policy.]   I can very plainly recognize, for example, that there are some Good Things that result simply from changing White House occupancy to almost anyone but Bush.

But then I read this and realize that Kerry wasn't making much of a statement at all.   Worse, it pisses me off & makes me feel like I've been taken on a wild, calculated ride -

John Kerry could be our next President, so like everyone else we're eager for clues to what his government would look like. One revealing indication came this week when the Massachusetts Senator floated the names of four possible Defense Secretaries: GOP Senators John McCain and John Warner, Democratic Senator Carl Levin, and former Clinton Defense Secretary Bill Perry.

At the least, the four names do nothing to mar Mr. Kerry's reputation as an agile politician. His four choices cover the gamut of security opinion in both major parties--from Mr. McCain on the hawkish end of the GOP, to the more moderate Armed Services Committee Chairman Mr. Warner, to the moderately liberal Mr. Perry, to the leftish Mr. Levin. You could call it an over-the-rainbow coalition.

...Our point in describing all this is that, far from clarifying Mr. Kerry's intentions as President, his four Pentagon names merely raise more doubts about what he really believes. Mr. Kerry is tossing out these names amid a war in which U.S. lives and credibility are at stake and which he is denouncing as "disgraceful."