Quote of the Day: 'enthusiasm' for McCain

National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru, responding to a reader who expressed reservations about John McCain because of the latter's lukewarm stance on life issues, hits the nail on the head:

Short answer: McCain needs 270 electoral votes, not 270 enthusiastic electoral votes; and pro-lifers need him to veto the Freedom of Choice Act, not to veto it enthusiastically.

For a longer answer, let me draw an analogy to the civil-rights movement. (I know pro-choice folks hate this analogy, but I’m not using it here to draw a moral equivalence.) John F. Kennedy does not seem to have cared much about the issue; it was a check-the-box question for him. (Bobby Kennedy was reportedly a different story.) It would nonetheless have been a setback for the civil-rights movement if the Democrats had nominated someone who wasn’t at least nominally committed to the cause. And one reason the civil-rights movement was able to get an ally as president was that it did not insist that the president had to have an emotional attachment to the cause.

Would I prefer it if McCain brought to the life issues the passion of Sam Brownback? Sure. But a country capable of electing a Brownback president wouldn’t need him.