What accounts for John McCain’s popularity? By which I mean, of course, his popularity amongst the press and television pundit class. After all, by some conventional measures, McCain is a politician, with few legislative achievements to his name (the most significant being his highly dubious campaign finance reforms) who shows little interest in the actual business of government, beyond sweeping bromides about “national greatness” and calls to “service”.
It helps that McCain is primarily interested in foreign affairs which carries much greater cachet in Washington than banal, number-crunching domestic policy. The pundit class considers a lack of foreign policy “experience” a serious handicap; having little interest in domestic affairs is not considered a problem. In part, for sure, this reflects the traditional view that the president has greater autonomy and power vis a vis foreign policy than matters domestic. But it’s also because foreign policy lends itself to generalised bloviating in a way that, say, economic policy does not.
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