Obama will honor John McCain at a pre-Inaugural dinner — one of three bipartisan dinners given that night in honor of McCain, Colin Powell and Joe Biden. Each dinner has its bipartisan hosts: McCain’s dinner hosted by Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick; Powell’s dinner hosted by Senator Claire McCaskill, and retired Senator John Warner; and Biden’s dinner hosted by Governor Tim Kaine and retired Senator Chuck Hagel.
I hope that someone gets some You Tube footage out of this — Obama and McCain at the Al Smith dinner were fun to watch.
You can’t make any predictions on change of tone or working relationships from a dinner, but what is always true is that if you want comity, you have to bring comity. No one brings it to you or just changes behavior because you said that is what you wanted. And the trying for some comity is worth doing and a pleasure to watch. Of course (and again) this maybe completely changed in 2 months, but the effort is good.