Senator McCain has mounted a high horse over eminent domain, we see from the text of a speech prepared for delivery yesterday in Cedar Rapids and sent out by his press office. He starts off with stirring words about the war against Islamist terror, which he calls “a profound and hugely consequential clash of ideals … a fight between right and wrong, in which relativism should have no place.” He quickly goes on to say that “central to our ideals is the sanctity of property rights. Without private property there can be no freedom, and without freedom there can be no America.”

He quotes John Adams as saying, “Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.” And in respect of the decision of the Supreme Court against Susette Kelo, the homeowner in Connecticut whose property the court allowed to be seized for use by a private developer, Mr. McCain says: “Mr. Adams would be shocked to learn what both the United States Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Connecticut did to Susette Kelo.”

Well, he’d also be shocked at what the Supreme Court of the United States did to Senator McConnell, when the sage of Kentucky sued over the abridgement of the First Amendment that the Congress put through with the McCain-Feingold speech regulation act in respect of campaign finances. We’re all for restricting eminent domain to the plain language meaning of the Constitution, which says “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” But this is the tragedy of the superannuated senator from Arizona. He is learning the hard way that if one wants to stand on the Bill of Rights, one has got to do it all the way through. One can’t traduce the First Amendment one season and then come rushing in brandishing the Fifth Amendment, even if one is a senator. Else wise one just starts to look hollow and foolish.

Senator McCain pledged, in his remarks prepared for delivery in Iowa, that he would “appoint strict constructionist judges who respect the Constitution and understand the security of private property it provides.” Quoth he: “If need be, I would seek to amend the Constitution to protect private property rights in America.” We wish him luck. Maybe he can amend the Constitution to shore up the First Amendment he left shredded by his campaign finance reforms. His amendment on eminent domain will stand until some McCain-like figure, currying favor with the glitterati, decides to legislate a way around it the way he and Senator Feingold did on the First Amendment. This is McCain’s story. He has lived a heroic life, but at key points he has shown a certain kind of weakness. And as a defender of Constitutional rights, he just lacks credibility.