The Ugly New McCain

Back in 2000 I supported John McCain's run for president and was disgusted when the Chimperator through lies and dirty tactics won the GOP nomination. Now John McCain has become such a liar and low life that at times I have to think his goal is to make the Chimperator look honorable. Admittedly, that'd be a hard task, but McCain surely seems to be doing his damnedest to pull it off. One has to wonder is it senility, a craven desire for power or what which would cause someone to utterly throw honor to the wind. Richard Cohen has a good column that looks at this slide into someone horrible in today's Washington Post. McCain has definitely sold his soul and become inherently dishonorable. Here are some column highlights:

*

Following his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain did something extraordinary: He confessed to lying about how he felt about the Confederate battle flag, which he actually abhorred. "I broke my promise to always tell the truth," McCain said. Now he has broken that promise so completely that the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised.

*

The precise moment of McCain's abasement came, would you believe, not at some news conference or on one of the Sunday shows but on "The View" . . . Last week, one of the co-hosts, Joy Behar, took McCain to task for some of the ads his campaign has been running. One deliberately mischaracterized what Barack Obama had said about putting lipstick on a pig -- an Americanism that McCain himself has used. The other asserted that Obama supported teaching sex education to kindergarteners. "We know that those two ads are untrue," Behar said. "They are lies."

*

Freeze. Close in on McCain. This was the moment. . . . Until then, it was possible for McCain to say that he had not really known about the ads, that the formulation "I approve this message" was just boilerplate. But he didn't. "Actually, they are not lies," he said. Actually, they are.
*

His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. . . . . No more, though.

*

His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.

*

And so McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can -- as he did in South Carolina -- renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won't work. Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.