Carl Bernstein Savages McCain

Carl Bernstein , the former Washington Post reporter of Watergate fame, has a column that is nothing short of a brutal in his assessment of the craven, dishonorable figure John McCain has become. Not only are his campaign tactics worthy of a slimy used car salesman, but his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate becomes less defensible with every passing minute that she opens her mouth. Again, I am not anti-woman and have two extremely intelligent and capable daughters. From watching Palin's interviews and reading the transcripts, my 19 year old college student daughter is (a) more savvy (and more honest), and (2) knows a hell of a lot more about issues, both domestic and foreign.

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Palin calls herself a hockey mom. Candidly, she strikes me as a cold weather version of the mindless soccer moms of this area who worry about children's sports events and piss ant PTA fundraisers, yet are oblivious as to the larger issues in the state, nation and the world. And I reach that assessment without even having to factor in her lunatic religious beliefs. With Palin on the national ticket, no wonder there is talk of America's fading empire. We must look like absolute morons - what McCain and the GOP apparently are counting on - to those living in educated foreign countries. Here are highlights from Bernstein's column:

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Three weeks after the 2008 Republican convention, on the cusp (maybe) of the first presidential debate, it is time to confront an awkward but profound question: whether in picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has committed -- by his own professed standards of duty and honor -- a singularly unpatriotic act.

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[W]hat does John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin -- the cavalier, last-minute process of her selection and careless vetting; and her over-briefed, fact-lite performance since -- reveal about this military man who has attested to us for years that he is guided by his personal code of honor?

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It does not take a near-death experience to know that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be commander in chief, or that -- in choosing her -- McCain has ignored his own oft-avowed code of conduct. "McCain made the most important command decision of his life when he chose Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee," noted David Ignatius in the Washington Post. "....No promotion board in history would have made such a decision."

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The conservative commentator George Will has been especially incisive of late about the "dismaying," "un-presidential temperament" of McCain and the sleazy tenor of his campaign. Karl Rove (!) has responded to the incessant lying of McCain's ads (one claims falsely that Obama has promoted "comprehensive" sex education for five-year-olds -- he had, in fact, endorsed legislation to insure that kindergartners were warned about sexual predators), by saying, yes, the McCain camp's mendacity has "gone one step too far."

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The issue of Palin's relative ignorance about international affairs and the larger world beyond America's shores (compared to previous vice presidential nominees), her attending arrogance in seeming to revel in it, and McCain's decision to subject the country to it in choosing a possible president -- is the biggest question in this election, or perhaps ought to be.

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Ultimately it is the choice of Palin, made in the moment when action speaks loudest, that may undermine a quarter-century of assertions by John McCain about the preeminence of duty, honor and country in his political schema.