We’ve sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists. What we are is a nation that upholds values and standards of behavior and treatment of all people no matter how evil or bad they are.

That was John McCain speaking on December 15th, 2005. McCain just met with President Bush and got the President to support McCain’s call for a law banning torture. It was a huge win for McCain’s anti-torture stance and for the country’s image on the world stage.

Yesterday, John McCain had something different to say about torture:

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When the Senate voted to ban the CIA from torturing its captives, by restricting the agency to those interrogation techniques allowed in the Army Field Manual, McCain made no impassioned speeches about the inhumanity of torture. McCain did not help gather votes for the bill. John McCain voted against the bill to ban torture, McCain voted to allow the CIA to continue torturing its captives and send them abroad to be tortured by less scrupulous interrogators.

John McCain is walking a fine line these days. He want’s to bomb Iran but he’s getting the anti-war Republican vote. McCain is in favor of torturing suspected terrorists but he’s perceived as staunchly against torture. This dichotomy (some might call it “blatant flip-floppery”) hasn’t worked for many in the past and is unlikely to work for McCain today. Now, I’ll be the last to claim that changing one’s mind for a good reason is a political fault; we want our leaders to constantly think about and reevaluate their opinions. But changing your mind to being in support of torture is clearly a case of putting one’s own feelings aside in an attempt to pander to a specific political demographic.

Sure, he has the primary locked up, but McCain should have started thinking about what to do against a Democratic candidate in the general election. This is not a nation of hawks; we are not prepared for another war (with Iran) and those who think we are are surely in the minority. We are not a nation of torture lovers, most of us recognize that torturing our captives only gets us bogus information and makes the rest of the world hate us more. I hope Huckabee sticks around after the primary is over (on an independent platform of course), between that and the public airing of McCain’s war and torture dirty laundry, Johnny Mac will find it hard indeed to land a long term stay in the White House.