McCain surrounded by lobbyists! McClellan telling the truth about Bush White House lies! Obama and Clinton tussling over what to do about the Florida and Michigan delegations! This is all important stuff. But what about policy? There's always plenty of media coverage for political developments. Policy matters....well, you know. It's the poor cousin in the house. Which is why I was delighted to receive a press release from the Democratic National Committee today that zeroed in on John McCain's stance on nuclear proliferation--which is one of the more important policy topics a president must handle.

The oppo research team at the DNC discovered that McCain has been inconsistent in articulating his policy in this area. And in the missive they zapped out to reporters they shared the evidence. In a Foreign Affairs article published last December, McCain wrote,

The nuclear nonproliferation regime is broken for one clear reason: the mistaken assumption behind the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) that nuclear technology can spread without nuclear weapons eventually following....The next U.S. president must convene a summit of the world's leading powers -- none of which have an interest in seeing a world full of nuclear-armed states -- with three agenda items. First, the notion that non-nuclear-weapons states have a right to nuclear technology must be revisited.

Yet in a speech he delivered a few days ago, McCain said,

But in order to take advantage of civilian nuclear energy, we must do a better job of ensuring it remains civilian. Some nations use the pretense of civilian nuclear programs as cover for nuclear weapons programs. We need to build an international consensus that exposes this deception, and holds nations accountable for it....I would support international guarantees of nuclear fuel supply to countries that renounce enrichment and reprocessing, as well as the establishment of multinational nuclear enrichment centers in which they can participate. Nations that seek nuclear fuel for legitimate civilian purposes will be able to acquire what they need under international supervision.

So a short time ago, McCain declared that spreading civilian nuclear technology undermines efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and he advocated a policy prescription: stop non-nuclear countries from developing nuclear energy. Yet now he says that it's fine for other nations to pursue nuclear energy, as long as there is appropriate international supervision. So which is it? Is the proliferation of nuclear technology a problem or not?

This is not a case of gotcha politics. At this point in his long career as a national security-minded legislator, McCain should have clear thoughts on this critical subject. Yet he's contradicting himself on a key issue. In addition to all the other stories in the news these days, this sure deserves front-page treatment.