The Kerry of the Midwest

Yesterday, Brendan Miniter's Wall Street Journal piece (by subscription) on the Talent-McCaskill race was full of insight. Perhaps the key portion was this:

[T]he positions [Claire McCaskill] takes don't so much straddle the political divide on national security as occupy both sides of it. On Iraq, she doesn't support a timetable for withdrawal, but told us that the Bush administration should "privately" tell the Iraqi government the U.S. will pull out, eventually. On North Korea, she opposes rewarding Kim Jong Il with bilateral talks, but blasts the president for a general "aversion" to direct talks. On terrorist surveillance, she supports wiretapping international calls of suspected terrorists, just not the way President Bush has gone about it. And so on.

Obviously, what Claire McCaskill has tried to do is project an image of moderation by attempting to have everything both ways -- a bit like being the John Kerry of the Midwest.

The problem, of course, is that if elected senator, she's not going to be able to have the luxury of being able to fine tune every issue to her precise liking. If there's legislation about wiretapping terrorists, she's just going to be able to vote "yea" or "nay." And with people like Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, Dick Durbin and Joe Biden to guide her, there's really not much doubt about where she'll head -- especially given the way that the party tries to buck those of truly independent minds (like Joe Lieberman).