Letters to the Editor
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McCain's a POW all over again
This time, he's a prisoner of the Iraq War. He's on the wrong side of this issue, siding with the president on his war of opportunity, regardless of the outcome.
Barring some unfortunate and untimely re-terrorism in the US between now and 2008, I think the Straight Talk Express is going to roll ever slower toward the brick wall of popular opinion, until it comes to a dead stop, and then McCain will fade away.
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He'd knock a buzzard off a gut-wagon
On a "Can't Stand To Look At His Stupid Face One More Time" scale of 1 to 10, I'm at about "8" with McCain.
Of course, on the same scale for Bush, I hit "10" years ago.
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McLame
Johnny whored himself out right after the "straight talk express" ran off the highway in South Carolina in 2000. since then, he's been Bushie's buttboy even more than Tony the Poodle. How now, brown nose? His POW respect bank has been overdrawn for a decade. Get a new act, McLame, to go along with your new trophy wife.
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Way harsh, Salon-dudes
McCain strikes me as -- literally and technically -- a tragic figure: a potentially good person brought to ruin by a single fatal character flaw. Even more tragic, that flaw is simultaneously, one of his better attributes -- and something he's abrogated in some ways, while embracing it in others, both to his detriment.
As of 2000 or even 2004, I think he could have been a very good President or Vice President. But in order to do so, he would have had to jump the party fence. Had he broken with the Republicans and signed on with the Kerry campaign (or, earlier on, switched parties as a serving Senator in the first year of Bush II), I think they could easily have been elected (look how close it was even with the wretched "campaign" that Kerry's Keystone Krew pulled off), and I think (though of course this kind of "what-if" is as un-testable as it is useless) could very well have started taking our country back from the worst depradations of the Cheney-Bush-corporatist-military cabal.
Of course that didn't happen -- and I think at least part of that is attributable to McCain's (obviously highly flexible and circumstantial) self-conception as a consistent and loyal pol.
Once he made that decision, the rest was inevitable. He could never have convinced a majority of Republicans to nominate him, and all the MSM fools who thought otherwise were once again drinking the kool-ade. Any brief visit to Free Republic or any other such site (if you can stomach it) at any time over the last 7 years would have made that abundantly clear, had anyone bothered to look.
But the obviously vain attempts that McCain has been making for the last 3+ years to try to re-establish his conservative bona-fides could, at their best, only have succeeded in further alienating the centrist, moderate, and left-leaning voters who were sold on the "straight-talk" and "maverick" story lines of the 2000 campaign. To me, and many others from what I see and hear out there, McCain's single greatest betrayal was not his stance on the war or even his embrace of the Bushists, but his knuckling under to the Falwells and the Dobsons, whom he correctly reviled as "agents of intolereance" in the 2000 primaries.
If anyone cares, let me share the two specific reasons that I thought back in '00, and still think now, that had McC been willing to jump parties, we all could have wound up in a better place. Both were things I saw at McCain events in nearby NH.
First, at one rally in the middle of the season, when McC was clearly doing very well in NH, there were some enviro-protesters at the event dressed up as trees. When a couple of them got to the mike and posed their questions and challenges about global warming to the candidate, he not only gave them a respective listen, he asked them what specific policies they recommended. When they were unable to give a coherent response, he still answered something along the lines of, "I'm not convinced -- but I'm open to hearing your evidence and your proposals, if you have any. Here's the go-to person for that on my staff." And, of course, McCain has actually been better on global warming than many of "our" Congress-critters. Now, how many Dem's can you envision even giving a respectful listen to, say, some NRA protesters dressed up as Uzis, let alone getting on board with any reasonable suggestions they might present (if that's not a total oxymoron, of course)?
The second was at another event at which, un-prompted by any specific challenges from attendees, McCain expressed dismay at the widening income and wealth gaps that were so apparent at that time (and have gotten so much worse since then). Again, how many of "our" pol's would be willing to touch that issue -- what I consider the 2nd-most important of our generation -- at all? They'd be running to hide behind the tree-garbed protesters, lest they be accused of (*gasp*) "class warfare." And you know that's true.
Somebody should write a play or an opera on this guy; this is high art.
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Read My Lips - No New Texans for President
The perhaps aptly named "Orson Swindle," from the first paragraph of this story, was one of H. Ross Perot's biggest supporters in '92 & '96. I guess this guy must have a fetish for elderly lunatics in the White House....
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Granite State Horse Race
I can already envision how the GOP New Hampshire primary will play out. Not only will McCain lose to "Mitt" Romney, Benito Giuliani, and Fred Thompson (probably in that order), he'll lose to Ron Paul as well. After coming in 5th place in New Hampshire, the McCain campaign will be mercifully over.
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I've got mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand, if McCain ran, the Dems might win, even if they ran Clinton.
On the other hand, if McCain ran, the brain-burnt psycho might actually win.
On further reflection, it's a lose-lose situation all the way around.
Drat.
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Misguided influence
Senator McCain still thinks that he will have more influence as a resident of the White House than as a Senator. One day he will awaken, as did the other Arizona aspirant for the White House, Senator Barry Goldwater, and realize that he has more influence outside of the Pennsylvania abode than in it.