Beyond the Dome

Poor John McCain just can't catch a break with his lengthy Senate record. Now Barack Obama's campaign is hammering him for voting against stricter fuel efficiency standards for cars - even though one of those votes happened because he thought the measure was too weak.

On a conference call with reporters this morning, Jason Furman, Obama's director of economic policy, said McCain's speech on energy policy this morning overlooked his record of voting for stricter corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE standards, in 2002, 2003 and 2005. Obama's rapid-response team later cited these same three votes in an e-mail titled, "Rhetoric vs. Reality: McCain & Fuel Efficiency."

The 2003 and 2005 votes check out. McCain did, in fact, vote against amendments by Democratic Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois - now the Senate majority whip - because he thought they went so far in requiring better gas mileage that they would have hurt the economy.

The 2002 vote, however, was against a version that was meant to undercut the amendment McCain was sponsoring with Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts - against heavy opposition from the auto industry and business groups.

In the debate on that year's energy bill, Kerry and McCain wanted to increase the mileage standards to 36 miles per gallon by 2015. Instead, the Senate approved a version by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and Republican Sen. Christopher S. Bond of Missouri that only would have required the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to increase the standards by some amount within two years.

It didn't say how much, and it would have allowed the agency to consider economic cost as a factor when it decided what standards to set. At the time, McCain and Kerry said it was highly unlikely that the agency, with a small budget and staff, would come up with an aggressive standard. The vote cited by Obama's campaign was McCain's vote against the overall energy bill, which had the Levin version of the mileage standards in it.

It's a classic example of how the context of a senator's vote can get lost in the heat of a campaign. McCain seems to have taken a nuanced position on mileage standards, preferring something stricter than Levin's version but less strict than Durbin's. But as Kerry found out as the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee - and McCain is finding out now - senators who run for president don't get rewarded for nuances.