Saying that the policy is working, Senator John McCain, recently re-elected to a fifth six-year term in the United States Senate from Arizona, suggested Barack Obama’s inexperience as President and as a presidential candidate was why he promised to repeal Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell:

“The military is at its highest point in recruitment, in retention, in professionalism, in capability,” McCain said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “So to somehow allege that this policy has been damaging the military is simply false.”

Instead, McCain called the attempt at repeal “a political promise made by an inexperienced president or candidate for president of the United States.”

Of course, it was a much more experienced John McCain who said four years ago:

“The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy,’ then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it,” McCain said in October 2006 to an audience of Iowa State University students.

And it was an experienced John McCain who showed reporters he has no understanding of how DADT works in the modern United States military, in September of this year:

John McCain and his sidekick, Lindsey Graham, held a victory press conference after they won the filibuster vote, which insured no imminent legislative action on DADT repeal. Kerry Eleveld was there — and she deals in facts. She questioned McCain’s flawed interpretation of how DADT works. He was wrong — and it sure looked like he was was getting ready to explode because someone had the audacity to challenge him.

This man should not be an authority on this topic. He doesn’t understand the policy, he doesn’t know how the policy works, he doesn’t know how DADT operates in today’s military, and he hasn’t held a consistent position on the subject during his Senate career. Now that the military “brass

comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy,’”

he’s decided to overrule their recommendations and NOT

consider seriously changing it.

In fact, as the rest of America’s elected officials gradually follow the three-quarters of the American public who support repeal of DADT, Showboat Ace Johnny has decided to move in the opposite direction. Not as a matter of principle, but because that provides him with the shiniest podium and the largest megaphone in Versailles media.

The Maverick, again bucking the trend. And — huzzah! — coincidentally getting headlines and press for doing so.

Except for one thing: bucking this trend is gonna earn Ace McCain a place in the history books not unlike George Wallace’s. Just as Wallace will be forever remembered for standing in the university schoolhouse door to bar African-American students entry, John McCain’s history book mention 100 years from now will most likely be standing athwart military readiness and unit cohesion, blocking the military recruitment center doorway with his lonely filibuster.

Is the DADT policy working? Ask this servicemember:

CONFIRMED TODAY: As the U.S. Senate is poised to take up repeal legislation, service members still cannot come out. A general just approved the separation of an SLDN client serving overseas in the U.S. Air Force. This service member now faces an administrative separation board. If the discharge moves forward, the fate of the service member’s career will ultimately fall to Secretary Michael B. Donley, Dept. of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson, and Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel Dr. Clifford L. Stanley.”

Bringing the filibuster of civil rights legislation into the twenty-first century will be John McCain’s Senate legacy. Despite five terms in the Senate, this is how historians will likely memorialize McCain: the last great civil-rights filibusterer in the sorry, backwards tradition of Strom Thurmond and Richard Russell.