JOHN MCCAIN IS INVOKING THE “AMERICAN STREET” in a speech in Munich. My MSNBC piece for today — which was delayed for technical reasons — is about the same topic. It should be up shortly.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the text of McCain’s speech. Read it. It’s terrific. Here’s an excerpt:

Foreign Minister Fischer recently warned against “primitive anti-Americanism.” I thank and commend him for his statement. But I am concerned, we should all be concerned, not only with the “primitive” anti-Americanism of the street that resents America’s successes, exults in our misfortunes, and ascribes to us motives that one must be a fool or delusional to believe. We should also be concerned with the “sophisticated” anti-Americanism, or perhaps more aptly, the “cynical” anti-Americanism of political leaders who exploit for their own ends the disinformed, “primitive” hostility to America voiced in some quarters of their societies; to further their ambitions to govern or to inflate perceptions of their international influence.

Just as some Arab governments fuel anti-American sentiment among their people to divert them from problems at home, so a distinct minority of Western European leaders appears to engage in America- bashing to rally their people and other European elites to the call of European unity. Some European politicians speak of pressure from their “street” for peaceful solutions to international conflict and for resisting American power regardless of its purpose. But statements emanating from Europe that seem to endorse pacifism in the face of evil, and anti-Semitic recidivism in some quarters, provoke an equal and opposite reaction in America.

There is an American “street,” too, and it strongly supports disarming Iraq, accepts the necessity of an expansive American role in the world to ensure we never wake up to another September 11th, is perplexed that nations with whom we have long enjoyed common cause do not share our urgency and sense of threat in time of war, and that considers reflexive hostility toward Israel as the root of all problems in the Middle East as irrational as it is morally offensive.

The legacy of the German election campaign last fall has complicated and harmed U.S.-German relations.

There’s much more. Bravo.