Why Did the Brits Invite Clinton and McCain?

Why do the Brits like to have American politicians address them at their political conferences?

This week Bill Clinton, his mind cleared after telling off Chris Wallace on eevil Fox News, gave the Labour Party a pep talk at its annual conference in Manchester. Don’t make the same mistake we did, he told them.

Next week Senator John McCain is going to address the British Conservative Party at its annual conference in Bournemouth. And so the British Spectator’s Matthew d’Ancona is in Washington to interview the man who has his name on a law that diminished Americans’ free speech rights and now has opposed President Bush’s efforts to interview terrorist suspects.

Of course, thousands would argue that Fox News’ tactics in the famous Clinton interview consistuted torture banned by Common Article Three of the Geneva Convention, particularly the prohibition in Section 1(c):

Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.

So maybe John McCain should be working on legislation banning Fox News from asking questions that might hurt the positive self-esteem of Democratic former presidents.

But back to McCain. What would the British Conservative Party want to be doing with John McCain? But it seems like the Brits like him because he appears as a centrist, and that is how David Cameron is “rebanding” the Conservatives.

But it makes you wonder. Is there something about John McCain that we conservatives just cannot see? Some brilliant approach to governing, some stunning record of judgment that is too obvious for us to grasp?

Or are we the guys that understand McCain only too well: too much “honor,” too much senatorial pride, too much desire to be well-thought-of by the media, and a live-long question in the judgment department?

As Hugh Hewitt says: “[John McCain] is a great American, a lousy senator, and a terrible Republican.”

The question still remains: Why do those Limeys like to have US politicians over, over there. Particularly when the Brits really don’t like the US and aren’t afraid to say so.