In general, John McCain's a pretty straightforward politician. More wars, less health care; more tax cuts, fewer social services. But on global warming, he's a bit complex. The McCain-Lieberman Bill was a serious, if somewhat insufficient, attempt to address climate change. Which is, in itself, odd. If you recognize the scale of the problem, presumably you'd push forward with an appropriately sized solution. But McCain and Lieberman came out with something on the lower bounds of appropriate, or possibly not even in the ballpark. But it was the most politically potent of the bills. Which leaves three explanations for it. 1) The first is simple politics: John McCain and Joe Lieberman understand the Senate and counted the votes and crafted a bill that they thought could pass as a good first step, even if it wouldn't fully solve the problem. This implies that under a possible John McCain presidency, McCain will push a much stronger climate change bill, as he'll have more political capital. 2) John McCain and Joe Lieberman believe that this was the "right" bill for the problem, even if most experts would disagree. They agree that global warming poses challenges, but thinks those challenges overstated, or the understanding of human ingenuity insufficient, and so came out with this proposal because they thought it the appropriate legislative approach. This implies that McCain will not push harder on climate change as president, because he thinks he's already got the right bill. 3) John McCain wanted to do something about global warming, but doesn't really know that much about it, and so carved out the most politically beneficial space for himself where he could be the fulcrum of any deal. This would imply that his interest is in the politics, and the eventual credit, of the issue, not the policy problem. I don't really know which hypothesis fits McCain best. But it's definitely a good sign that he sent his top economic adviser to have a long and wide-ranging interview with Dave Roberts of the environmental magazine Grist. The interview doesn't specifically answer the questions I have above, but it does suggest a real engagement with the issue, and Holtz-Eakin, who has McCain's ear, clearly gets the problems, which is important.
