McCain's civil rights problem

John McCain is on a mission to court black voters, although it helps when you know where they actually live (South Philadelphia is largely Italian, with growing numbers of Asians and Hispanics). What would help more is if you didn't vote against the 1990 Civil Rights Act. Or really anything called the "Civil Rights Act," black people may tend to get touchy about that.

In 1990, McCain was one of the deciding votes in helping then-President George H.W. Bush sustain a veto against the relatively benign Civil Rights Act of 1990 [...]

The act was a response to a series of controversial Supreme Court decisions made the year before. In those decisions, the court overturned a 1971 ruling that required employers to prove a "business necessity" for screening out minorities and women in its hiring practices. That burden of proof, the 1989 court said, should instead be placed on the plaintiff who alleged that his or her client had been unlawfully screened.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate, deeming this unjust, passed bills that would restore the old law. But the Bush administration objected, insisting that a reversion to the old way would amount to forcing employers to have hiring quotas. It was a controversial and somewhat dubious claim, one that the New York Times editorial page called "an unjustified charge." After all, the system had worked fine from 1971 through 1989. Nevertheless, the president vetoed the legislation.

When a motion to override the veto came to the Senate floor, there was question as to whether it would receive the 67 votes needed to pass. The environment was so charged that white supremacist David Duke watched from one section of the Senate gallery while civil rights leader Jesse Jackson stood briefly at the chamber's other end.

Ultimately, the vote fell one short: 66 to 34. Prominent Republican Senators like John H Chaffe, John Danforth, Pete Domenici, and Arlen Specter, all chose to override the veto. McCain - who had earlier voted for a watered down version of the bill, one that didn't reverse the court's decision - backed the president.

Incredibly, he's still defending his vote by saying that "I've never believed in quotas." Of course, the bill would not provide quotas so that seems like a classic Chewbacca defense.

McCain wants to play the nice guy on race, but it doesn't match up with his past. I don't think he's a racist but he certainly listens to those who would rather make things smoother for business than exhibit any sort of racial sensitivity. That's not going to, how do you say, play well.