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By The Directors Posted in 2008 | FISA | McCain | National Security — Comments (13) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

It's no secret that John McCain, now the frontrunner and likely GOP nominee for President in 2008, still has work to do to win the trust of many conservatives. His upcoming appearance at CPAC offers one opportunity to show what he is willing to say to reassure conservatives about what a McCain Administration might look like. But he can do some more immediate good by acting now to help secure passage of legislation critical to the War on Terror.

Presidential nominees don't have the luxury of waiting until after the inauguration to start acting like the leader of their party, and don't need to wait until the nomination is on ice to start drawing contrasts with their potential general election opponents. That's why we join in the suggestion by Andy McCarthy and the editors of National Review that Senator McCain should come out loudly, forcefully and publicly in favor of immediate passage of bipartisan legislation now being debated on the Senate floor to reauthorize and modernize procedures for gathering intelligence on foreign terrorists. Without immediate action by the Senate, our nation will face gaps in our ability to track and interdict terrorist plots - yet left-wing activists and bloggers want to stall the bill and are pressuring Democratic Senators, including Senator Clinton and Senator Obama, to prevent the bill's passage or water it down through onerous amendments. The Bush Administration already supports the bill, which passed the Senate Intelligence Committee by a 13-2 vote. But it can use all the help it can get - and Senator McCain, who has sold himself to GOP voters principally on the basis of his credentials as a prospective Commander in Chief in wartime, is just the man to provide that help.

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McCarthy summarizes the stakes:

After a brief extension of the Feb 1 deadline, the current statutory authorization for monitoring terrorists and other national security threats outside the United States will lapse in a little over a week. The administration supports (for the most part) a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) bill that streamlines FISA application requirements, ensures that we can eavesdrop outside the U.S. without court supervision or interference (as the original 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act intended), and gives the telecommunications companies immunity from the ruinous suits they are currently facing for cooperating with the NSA's warrantless surveillance program (if the telecoms can show they acted in good faith on an assurance from the government that the program was legal).

A major thrust of the left-wing effort to block the bill focuses on the telecom immunity provisions. Those provisions are themselves essential; allowing civil damages lawsuits to go forward will deter future cooperation with government efforts to battle terrorism and will open up classified intelligence-gathering methods to intrusive discovery in court, all regardless of the merits of the suits. The focus on these provisions by the bill's opponents is a classic example of putting the special-interest venality of the plaintiffs' bar above national security.

In previous efforts to bring FISA legislation to the Senate floor, Senator McCain missed the vote the day before the Florida primary. However necessary his absence may have been at the time, his lead in the delegate race now gives him the luxury of some space to prioritize national leadership over retail campaigning. But his responsibility goes beyond just showing up to vote. Senator McCain was partly responsible for this issue going before Congress at all, having publicly urged President Bush to get legislative authorization for surveillance programs instituted after September 11, over the Administration's initial objections. (More here). And conservatives who doubt his commitment to wartime intelligence-gathering due to his position on interrogation of detainees need to see that he will fight for less intrusive ways of gathering intelligence than waterboarding.

If the GOP is to unite behind a national-security-first candidate, the party's voters need to be shown that that candidate is deadly serious about protecting them - and willing, able and even eager to put the feet of recalcitrant Democrats to the fire when they lack that same seriousness. Senator McCain, you have your mission. Do you choose to accept it?