WASHINGTON _ As you read elsewhere in our blogs, John Danforth got off the fence today and endorsed John McCain’s surging presidential candidacy.

It’s not the boldest move given McCain’s success of late, but it’s significant and Danforth had some insightful comments when we caught up with him this afternoon here in Washington.

“After so many years out of politics, I haven’t noticed any tremendous clamor of people from Missouri to say who I was for or against,” Danforth joked, when asked why he waited so long.

He may be out of politics (he retired from the Senate in ’95) but Danforth is a charter member in the Serious Thinker Wing of the Republican Party, unafraid over the years to say what’s wrong with politics and the GOP.

What he’s seen too much of this election cycle, he said, are “all these candidates just running around telling people what they want to hear – except for McCain.”

The Arizonan McCain, with whom he served on the Senate Commerce Committee, “is going to have the strength of his convictions and not just say whatever is popular to win some votes,” Danforth said.

Danforth went through the GOP winnowing he’s watched. Mitt Romney, he said “had a variety of positions on a variety of issues.” People were excited for a time about Rudy Giuliani, but that faded. Fred Thompson got in “and there didn’t turn out to be much there.”

“I think people were waiting for someone, for something to happen,” he said, referring of a McCain comeback befitting comparisons with the biblical revival of Lazarsus.

“There’s personal admiration, he really is a hero. I think we’re looking for that and we’re looking for somebody who says what they think,” Danforth said.

Danforth said he believes that McCain has what it takes to unify a badly splintered GOP. “It’s almost conventional wisdom to say that the Republican Party has lost its direction and is all over the place. But every Republican I know believes in trying to keep taxes down and trying to keep the weight of government light and not presenting the federal government as having the answers to every single problem if it spends enough money. And everybody I know believe in strong national defense. And every Republican I know believes that if America doesn’t provide stalwart leadership in a time of international chaos, nobody else will.”

He added: “Here is a guy who spent five and a-half years in a Vietnamese prison and he’s old enough that he doesn’t need this for his own ego. He is going to, I think, stand toe-to-toe” with the Democratic nominee in November.