On Character: The Tragic Fate Of John McCain
John McCain was once an exceptional politician. He really was. He really was a maverick. He had real integrity. Much as any liberal might have disagreed with him on substance, his heroism as a POW was internally consistent with his political positions. Like, for example, his opposition to the Bush torture regime. Like his opposition to American jingoism and his support of a humane immigration policy. Like his willingness to call leaders of the Christian Right by their proper name: agents of intolerance.
All that is gone. John McCain has abandoned what he really believed. John McCain has betrayed himself. And he has done it for the one reason he swore he never would. He has authorized a campaign of sleaze in order to win an election.
This matters much more for him than it would for another man. There's a Shakespearean dynamic here. Like with Othello. When a simple warrior jettisons his simple values the consequences are entirely devastating.
A lifelong compromiser like Obama (if you didn't know he was that, you were living in a dream) has another kind of integrity. It's flexible. It was never complete and it never lapses. Obama is like FDR. He will return to his values no matter how far off he wanders in response to circumstances. He will never lose his way.
But a man like John McCain is utterly lost once he turns against himself. You can see it in the his face. There's an ugly vacuum where once there was a solid core. The man who said he would never surrender has surrendered.
I hope Obama gets a chance in the debate tomorrow night to express some sadness, some regret for this loss. I hope he gets a chance to pity John McCain.
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What difference does it make, Thomas?
No, I mean, really.
The American People are being presented with, at best, "a palliative choice." In other words, "it feels good to feel like you're making a choice, but it really doesn't matter either way."
As long as you believe that your choices are limited to 'Obama or McCain,' then the simple truth is that it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference which one you choose. As the Good Book says, "by their fruits shall ye know them." Surf over to the official(!) Congressional Record at http://tho
When a $600-billion defense bill wanders through sometime this week, I have no doubt that all of the votes (McCain, Obama, Biden) will be "aye."
Read the actual text of the aforesaid bill (which you can also easily do), and I assure you, all of their States will be well-represented in the porcine department. . .
So, go ahead... if it makes you feel good, pick "Door Number One" OR pick "Door Number Two." As long as it does not occur to you that "Door Number Three" or "Four" EXISTS, I don't care.
Now... if you DO happen to make "the wrong choice," don't worry. My electronic voting machines keep no paper record, and ultimately they will "count the votes." The outcome of the "free and fair election," therefore, is already pre-determined.
Truth sucks, don't it?
As a theme here, he never had honor nor integrity to begin with. Now if we want to mourn the myth of John McCain, fine, but he was never any of those things. The Rolling Stone's article puts it together at length. It should be required reading. No slams, no smears. Just an accounting of narcissistic opportunism.
(Shrug...)
Nonetheless, he IS the Royal Heir.
He WILL "win." And there will not be any "hanging chads" this time. In fact, in a sufficient-number of elections to guarantee control of the electoral college, there will be no paper record at all. Not a scrap of the "stuffing" will be visible.
Sweet, huh?
I was just going to post the same thing - wondering why TdeZ says that the "maverick" was the real McBush and not the person we're seeing now.
I second the rec to read the Rolling Stone article.
While I think you had the best of intentions to identify his integrity, I have to disagree with you. His lack of integrity began very early on the personal side of his life...his first wife. Then came the politics and the Keating 5 and his associations with people that if Obama had associated with them, he would be smeared.
It is sort of sad to see this happen. One month you're canonized a saint and future of the free world. The next month you're spinning like a top listening to handlers from a psych ward.
Hopefully, politics can only go up from here.
McCain never had much integrity to begin with. Obama has demonstrated repeatedly through out this long campaign that he is a man of honor and integrity and intelligence.
I greatly disagree with your view that McCain had any integrity in his political career.
At the beginning of his political career he was involved in the Keating 5 Scandal
A fraudulant financial scandal of historic proportions. Just like today.
Here is a link to a video about McCain's involvement in the Keating 5 Saving and Loan scandal.
http://my.
Having just finished reading the Rolling Stones article on McCain I am pretty confused about your definition of character. According to the article McCain is all about McCain first, and has only ever really cared about himself. Even his great story of refusing release from prison is misleading. It turns out that in order to be released he would have had to publicly denounce America, after already giving military information to the enemy. This is something that the overwhelming majority of POWs were unwilling to do, so McCain's unwillingness, while commendable, is hardly unique. For those who have not yet read the article a link is provided below.
http://www
ZENGOTIA- Great points in your article. Actually, I had begun to think some of the same things myself.
It's really sad to watch how a politician can go down the dark abyss of politically unacceptable and seemingly unethical behaviors. John McCain knows better but at this desperate point, he probably doesn't give diddley.
Yeah it really does lend respect to Shakespeare and the Greeks. Nothing new under the sun. But for all of that, how does one square this idea that he was once heroic with so much in his life, not the least of which his terrible, terrible voting record on veterans' benefits. Perhaps it is not so accurate to see him as someone so noble, but rather a rather ordinary and exceedingly privileged and narcissistic man, who survived one horrific event that provided him with a measure of humanity that others find without having to suffer so grandly, and then over the years returned to the callow man of his youth embittered by the reality that no one has the world by the tail; no one. His failure today to stop mid speech and call out to that man who called Barack Obama a terrorist says it all.
Instead of stopping and saying, as he should have, I want to win this election, but right now half this nation appears to want Barack Obama to be their president, my president, and while I have serious differences with him, he is not a terrorist, but a citizen who has had the greatness and courage to run for the highest office in our great country, an office to which we both aspire.
He let it happen, and in that pause, a cold wind blew through the chambers of history.
I agree. There was a way for him to have chastised that man in the crowd, while still maintaining his patter of how he and Obama are different. I want to believe there were others in that crowd who would have cheered him if he had. It was an opportunity for McCain to regain some dignity and he decided to take the low road--again.
Why does this appeal to his base? When I talk to people here who are SO in love with him -- but especially Palin -- I just don't understand.
I ask them why they feel the way they do about him. They can't tell me.
What it always comes down to is ultimately voting AGAINST Obama.
So it goes in the south.
Sad.
I view it as McCain's gift to the country. We couldn't hack another Republican even if he were a saint. There's too much baggage to pull along. If there is a God, His timing with the financial crisis was impeccable. If there had to be a meltdown, better now than after 11/4.
I guess that makes Steve Schmitt Iago, and the country Desdemona, strangled by the enraged Moor of Sedona.
Now, anyone for "MacBeth"?
I think you are right. I guess that being president is his thirty pieces of silver. It is a shame that he has reached his peter principal .
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