I consider New York Times columnist, David Brooks, to be a rare moderate Republican voice in the MSM. He has been featured on the McNeil-Lehrer Report for many years now. During the run-up to the caucuses and primaries, he wrote columns that seemed to support the candidacy of Senator Obama (such as this column on the eve of the New Hampshire primary); but by April, for reasons he cites here, in this article the bloom was off the rose.

And now, Brooks is asserting that, "The main axis in McCain’s worldview is not left-right. It’s public service versus narrow self-interest."

John McCain is not a normal conservative. He has instincts, but few abstract convictions about the proper size of government. He’s a traditionalist, but is not energized by the social conservative agenda. As Rush Limbaugh understands, but the Democrats apparently do not, a McCain administration would not be like a Bush administration.

The main axis in McCain’s worldview is not left-right. It’s public service versus narrow self-interest. (bolding added) Throughout his career, he has been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness — whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska’s Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff.

When McCain met Sarah Palin last February, he was meeting the rarest of creatures, an American politician who sees the world as he does. Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy. Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska. She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.

Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens.

I know that the standard Democratic line has become that a McCain administration will simply be a continuation of the Bush administration; and if that is true, I can understand why so many Obama/Biden supporters keep answering my personal concerns about our ticket by warning me to consider the alternative. However, many Republicans and some Independents I know who are fed up with Bush/Cheney don't think that will be the case; and more and more of them seem to be rallying behind the McCain/Palin ticket. This could be a huge problem for the Obama/Biden ticket chances in November; and, personally, I think the sooner we face that possibility, the better the chances for the Obama/Biden ticket.

So, what do Clarkies posting here at CCN think? What do you think is the likelihood that a McCain/Palin administration would be the same as a Bush/Cheney administration? Where might the two be alike, and where might they differ? And is it really our best strategy to try to paint a McCain/Palin administration as simply more of the same as Bush/Cheney? Or, will broad sections of the electorate find that to be more of a desperate and unfair shot after the McCain/Palin advertising juggernaut which will doubtless paint them as the ticket of change and real reform that will shake up Washington?