What John McCain Can Still Do For His Country

Watching McCain slip further and further in the polls and public esteem makes me just a little sad. I didn't support him, but the McCain of 2000 was an impressive man. Everything about this John McCain is tired and stale, his ideas most of all. If he weren't so wrong about the issues that matter most, I could almost feel sorry for him. He is a leader whose time has passed. With his wheedling voice and queasy smile, he reminds me of nothing so much as a creepy undertaker, my friends.

The reek of desperation and decay extends to Sarah Palin. Although I don't agree with her politics, I believe we need more women leaders at all levels of government and in both parties. As Alaska's governor, she was clearly a rising star with the guts and charm to become a national political figure.

Instead, she's nothing but a shrill mouthpiece for her feeble boss, doing all she can to stoke the fires of hate and xenophobic fear that still flicker in the Republican Party. Her vicious attacks -- designed to incite racial enmity at best and violence at worst -- will haunt her for the rest of her political career, if she has one. In the coming climate of hope and interdependence, her shameful performance in the last weeks of this campaign will be hard to forget or forgive.

It's clear that McCain should and will lose this election. He doesn't have the answers to our enormous problems and he's not up to the job. The only questions are whether he will reign in his running mate before she does more damage, and whether he is able to be gracious in defeat on November 4. If he still has a shred of his old decency, he'll do what he has consistently failed to do in this campaign: put country first.