Of course, the idea of casting any party as the whiners’ faction is silly. Politics is the act of organizing grievances. Pretty much every political group that has ever existed has involved significant amounts of bellyaching. That’s especially true of the modern right, whose Nixon and Goldwater contingents alike organized themselves around noisy, grouchy complaining about eastern elitists, bureaucrats, long-hairs, and the other bullying bad guys of the Republican imagination. But when insurgents, as the GOP was in the ’60s, harp on opponents’ every word, questioning their patriotism or their integrity or their fairness, it can sound like righteous indignation. When a party in the deep autumn of its political era does so, it comes off as petty bitching. And exhibit A, improbably enough, is John McCain.
With his five years of stoic imprisonment and his history of making nice with old tormentors, John McCain seemed like a perfect addition to the decades-long tradition of playing the foil for grievance-obsessed Democrats. But a funny thing happened to cheery McCain: He started whining himself.
Right now is the Democrats’ moment. Goodbye, John McCain, war hero. Hello, John McCain, bellyacher. What are the Republicans going to do in response? Complain about how unfair it is to say such things about a decorated national treasure? Typical. The whiners.