This is Not the John McCain New Hampshire Once Loved

What happened to John McCain? What happened to the man so many of us in New Hampshire have admired and respected for so long? The fierce bipartisan warrior, the straight talker, the maverick whose ideas nearly everyone found some common ground with now seems missing in action. He seems to have betrayed the very attributes that originally commended him to us and earned our earlier trust and support.

We continue to stand in awe of his heroic service to his country during Vietnam, but now he shamelessly uses those experiences at every opportunity, as if it excuses him from having to answer any really tough questions about the economy or foreign policy. The answer to everything is not to mention his admittedly harrowing POW days. My experience interviewing heroes of war is that most prefer to deflect attention from themselves and let their record speak for itself. McCain seems to think that it buys him a permanent pass. But it is impossible to know how to fight the new wars if you are hopelessly lost in the old ones.

Surrounded and programmed by the lobbyists he once despised, the man who once effortlessly straddled the aisle and spoke from the heart now carefully hews to a prompter-read, soulless far-right agenda.

This is a man who once denounced and purposefully avoided the politics of personal destruction, having felt firsthand its painful consequences in 2000 in South Carolina, but who now wants to win at any cost. By ridiculing his opponent's commitment to public service, he has undermined the very reason we were drawn to McCain in the first place. By trying to steal the mantle of change from the Democrats, he demonstrates only the riskiness of his shoot-from-the-hip style. That may have worked in the Senate and on the campaign trail, but it is hardly presidential. In fact, it is frightening in the extreme and bespeaks an instability difficult to reconcile considering our complicated world and its myriad problems.

More to the point, he continues almost daily to demonstrate that instability and other judgmental and temperamental concerns, issues and complaints that originally brought a slew of challengers into the Republican primary contests. And in the most important decision of his candidacy, he cynically and irresponsibly chose the supremely unqualified Sarah Palin, cheapening the race as if it were some high school popularity contest or the latest "American Idol" competition.

Even the most ardent true-believers among us must be privately shaking in their boots contemplating a heart-beat-away Palin presidency during these difficult times. When Putin acts up, who do you want whispering in your President's ear: Joe Biden or Sarah Palin?

McCain is a man who once championed openness and fairness in government, who now wants to continue the failed policies of the current administration and who increasingly wants to make the crucial decisions of our democracy behind closed doors with the same cronies who got us into this mess in the first place. And he has shown a profound indifference to and often startling ignorance of economic affairs just as our country inches toward depression.

That threatens to make him the next Herbert Hoover if he should win. And his old strong suit, foreign policy, is slipping away too, as gaffe after gaffe displays his fundamental shortcomings. I want my President to know the difference between a Sunni and Shia. John McCain does not.

We in New Hampshire bear some responsibility, I suppose. Thinking we had the old McCain, we gave him a decisive victory in our primary that permitted him to vanquish those challengers. But he betrayed us. If you have to say you're a maverick in your ads, it's clear you're not. The real maverick turns out to be Barack Obama, who bucked his party's establishment and whose once-lonely positions have been adopted by nearly everyone including even the Bush administration. Nearly everyone, that is, except John McCain. So what happened to him?
That's what Granite State citizens have been asking the last few months. The answer is enough to turn us blue.

This article first appeared in the Manchester Union Leader.

Comments

[plwalsh]

Hello neighbor. Saw you at the rally in Unity June.

I don't know what's happening down where you are now, but up here where your summer place is a whole lot of McCain signs vanished right after he picked Palin. None at all on our street now. I'm seeing a 13 point Obama lead in some polls.

[maryhaze]

same here, i'm in the white mountains & see more Obama stickers, shirts & pins than anything else. mccain has lost his hold & i've lost any respect i ever had for him.

[cosmomom]

My John McCain bubble burst when I figured out that this "moderate" advocated overturning Roe V Wade. But I still respected him immensely for holding a higher standard in the way he conducted his campaign. Sadly, he has completely sold himself out. Ken Burns summed up everything I've been feeling in the last few weeks. John McCain's legacy? Sarah Palin? Wow, what a way to go.

[SwingingFromCenter]

I loved McCain circa 2000. I voted for him in my state's primary. I wrote in his name on the GE ballot.

This man is not John McCain. Not the one I knew, at least. He realizes that this is his last shot to become president, to sit in the big chair, and he's decided to sell out, compromise every moral he had, in order to try and get it. He's become what he once claimed to hate most, and that is unforgivable.

[reininop]

Sadly, I think there are a lot of independent voters that feel this way. I think as much as he may have riled up his base -- that would have voted for him anyway -- he has distanced himself from the center. The lying, the baseless attacks, the refusal to admit any mistake, all are trademarks of an disingenuous candidate.
Has he really changed so much in the past 8 years? Are his decisions being made for him by campaign managers with ulterior motives for Mccain being President? The reason is irrelevant. Mccain desperately wants to remind us of the person he was, but it doesn't change the person who has become.

[bennySF]

Dear Mr. Burns,

Not only has Senator McCain surrounded himself with lobbyists, but he has surrounded himself with all of George Bush's staff, from Karl Rove to Nicolle Wallace to Steve Schmidt. Sarah Palin has also been surrounded by the architects of some of the ugliest campaigning in this country's history, as well as George Bush's own speechwriter for "her" convention debut. How can McCain claim to be "change" and "reform" when he has personally chosen the very people who brought us the last 8 years?

[Decipherer]

Sadly, the filmmaker whose reputation and life's work is to explain historical truths to large groups of people has seriously been duped by the McCain mythology. Little wonder Mr. Burns feels betrayed -- he actually believed all that McCain nonsense. Makes you wonder about all the other myths he's turned around to sell us.

If I were Ken Burns, I certainly would have kept my mouth shut about McCain.

[PoliSci2008]

I've been a life long Democratic, but in 2000, I'd wish GOP would have picked McCain for the Rep. presidential nomination, b/c I had disapproved of the Gore/Liberman ticket...w­ith the emphasis on Liberman. Most likely I would have voted for the then maverick McCain, b/c in 2000 this Democratic voter was face with little options.

[kicksave7]

Well said Mr. Burns...I once respected Mr.McCain but no more. His greedy ambition and slash and burn tactics this election have been eye opening. He is an angry old man who seems to feel that because he was a POW he should have automatic claim to the presidency. An entitlement, if you will. It must be noted that a lot of the "character" issues his campaign wants to bring up about Obama were campaign tactics that Hillary Clinton used against Obama in primaries.­..look where it got her.

[Opsimath44]

What's the difference between McCain and Bush?

Bush was a better pilot.

[autrykid]

Opsimath44
Bad form not to cite the source of your comment. I read the same yesterday in a Rolling Stone piece that was published on Truthout.

[dagdavid]

Ken Burns documentaries have always shown the filmmakers ability to fully present an issue. His article about McCain is as incisive as his films.

[JailNeoconVicts]

Ken-- read the article in the new Rolling Stone. Sadly, the guy we all thought we respected never existed. "John McCain" is a self-created myth, a mask to hide a spoiled brat with weak morals but overweaning ambition. MacBeth isn't the apt Shakespeare metaphor-- he at least was a great warrior, while McCain was a bumbler. And Macbeth never broke; evil though he became, he died with his courage intact.

The more accurate comparison would be the effete braggart Dauphin in Henry V.

The truth is finally coming out, and stripping away the fiction. McCain is nobody's maverick, and never has been, except in his own mind.

[poleezz]

Mr. Burns,

He never was that man. Sorry.

[anelder]

ditto, ditto, ditto.

Yet so many missed that along with the so many who didn't see the weakness in G.Bush. A check into backgrounds show similar traits and similar reasons for it.

[jadeba]

What many of us now see is that the man we thought existed, never did. The Rolling Stone article lays it all out nicely - he has always been someone willing to do anything or say anything to further his own selfish goals. Maverick? No, just someone who does not respect anyone else's opinion. Rather than finding common ground, he'd rather pummel anyone who disagrees - he chooses to fight - he likes it. He is a little man, trying to prove himself to a distant (and more successful) father. 4 more years of Bush? No, 4 more years worse than Bush, I think.

[siciliabel]

With regards to foreign policy gaffes, I'll go you one further. Not only does John McCain not know the difference between Sunni and Shia, he doesn't care to know. The information to educate himself is as available to him as it is to you and me. He doesn't think it's important to know, so he doesn't bother. I don't want that kind of arrogance leading the way to foreign policy. It implies, none too subtly, that the differences that lead to Muslim conflict are no more important to assimilate than it is to know the difference between vegetarians and vegans.

[exoevolution]

John McCain's war "hero" days were 40 YEARS AGO.

John McCain the "maverick" in 2000 is long gone.

John McCain has become a very, very SAD man.

Now with a month to go in the election, America will get to see how LOW this very, very SAD man can go.

John say it ain't so!

[cheerleaderBush]

The myth of the "maverick" label on McCain is a ridiculous media creation - all one needs to do is looking at his voting record. Sure he went against his party on A COUPLE of issues in the past, but in the past few years (after he knew he was going to run for prez), he's contradicted his so-called 'maverick' positions on every one of those issues (tax cuts, religious right issues, campaign reform, etc). I might also add that his foreign policy vision seems to be to the right of GW Bush/Cheney - if you can try to wrap your head around that.

John McCain, like most career POLITICIANS, sold his soul years ago to whatever and whoever will help keep him in office and increase his power.