Not only is the ugly campaign not of his doing, but somehow he was forced to choose a lousy running mate. For a man of supposedly unshakable conviction, he sure breaks easily.

Let's assume Senator McCain is all those things: principled, honorable, and so on. Let's assume that all the shit his campaign and it's mouthpieces are throwing around is all against his wishes.

Isn't that really a huge condemnation of his ability to lead? If you can't lead your own damn campaign, what does that say about your ability to lead the country?

So it essentially boils down to a choice between Senator McCain being dishonorable or being unqualified. (Or both, of course.) Either way, he's not someone I want as President.

She should just go back to Wonkette. She seems hopelessly out of her depth in the real world - REALLY sick of hearing about how much she idolizes McCain.

Look, I get that journalists and media figures personally like McCain.

And I get that it's considered HUUUUUUUGE Maverick News when a Republican occasionally dissents slightly from his party, whereas when Democrats vote in a Republican fashion it's taken for granted -- as in, "Well, heck, if Democrats didn't vote with Republicans a lot then they'd be Communists, right?"

But this absurd myth that there used to be This Honorable Man who somehow stood astride all nasty politics until the evil, terrible, manipulative righties manipulated him and someday the True Jesus John Magic Maverick McCain Will Re-Emerge is just ridiculous and pathetic at this stage.

This isn't a game. McCain knows he's lying, McCain knows what he is doing, and McCain knows exactly who he chose to run his campaign.

This endless festishization of "President as Our Commander-in-Chief" is one of those small but pernicious reflections of how militarized we've become, of how we are a society in a state of perpetual and endless war.

It seems like we as a society have always preferred the gun as our symbol and identifier. "How the West was Won" and all that. I think it stems in part from how the mythical 'citizen soldier' was responsible for the revolution's success (neglecting France's support and the fact the British never brought their full strength to bear). Its also easier to point a gun, rather than a well-written piece of parchment, to make a point or end an argument; true Washington stopped his troops with a well-spoken farewell address, but how often do you hear about it in history class?

Would things have been different if Washington's army had in fact rebelled, thereby destroying the myth before it took root? I've no idea. But at the very least it might have had American citizens thinking twice about how desireous it was to be considered a soldier first and a craftsman second.

And if Senator McCain is an "unwilling victim" here, what does that say of his ability to govern? Has anyone asked Cox and company if this means he's going to let others run the country like he's allowed them to run his campaign?

If only Obama had agreed to that series of town hall meetings, McCain wouldn’t have been forced to lie about his record, his background, and run one of the most dishonest campaigns in modern history.

McCain didn't want to do it. He wanted to run a clean, honest campain on the issues, but Obama forced him to go tawdry, negative, and dishonest. Why can’t people see that it’s Obama’s fault?

McCain as the Incredible Hulk. You make him mad, and you’re to blame for the bad stuff that happens.

Not just in McCain, who has clearly lacked it for most of his political career (and one might argue prior to it as well), but in the adulatory courtiers who fawn over his alleged (and mostly made-up and superficial) principled maverickness, and excuse his every "misstep". They want to be loved (I guess they didn't get enough of it from their parents, and don't know how to get it from their friends and SO's), and McCain is more than ready to oblige them, with his mavericky BBQs and edgy jokes about bombing countries and first daughters.

Something is empty and wanting inside these malformed faux "journalists" (you are simply not a legitimate journalist if you impose your own views and feelings on that which you are covering, and don't make an honest attempt at maintaining some objective distance from it), and they make up for it through these phony bonding experiences with one of the biggest public phonies today. They are lazy, they are dishonest, many of them are profoundly stupid (which Cox is not, making her even more disappointing), and they are what passes for journalists today.

McCain is a bad person. He is a liar. He is a moron. He has a dark heart and cares for nothing and no one but himself. He might even be a bit crazy. He is nothing like the public persona that he's carefully cultivated over the past few decades. And yet, he's managed to mesmerize a significant portion of today's poltical press corps into buying into his lovable and principled old maverick shtick, and they either can't, or won't, see through it. They are like the co-dependant partner of a clearly bad and destructive person, who are in full-blown denial about them, and keep excusing their clearly atrocious behavior by saying "But you don't understand what a good person they really are deep down".

Um, yeah. Now what are you going to do about that black eye, sunshine?

You said it! And whether McCain is honorable but an incompetent leader, or a ruthless and unprincipled sham who would stoop to anything, either way he is not the kind of person we need leading the country in these challenging times. He has proven time and again that he does not have the right stuff for executive leadership.

But if you research John McCain, you find out that he actually never was a man of honor. If you read the latest Rolling Stones article on him, even if you disregard half as unreliable, you must reach a conclusion that McCain has always been anything but honorable. The real McCain seems to be a spoiled privileged brat who was a beneficiary of blatant nepotism since childhood, cruel, hotheaded, nasty and dishonest. Cox and her peers have decided to worship a myth that doesn't actually exist in reality.