David Corn: John McCain: From Hero to Hollow Man

[babylonsister]

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/davidcorn/2008/10/john-mccain-from-hero-to-hollo.html

John McCain: From Hero to Hollow Man

By David Corn | October 7, 2008 9:53 AM


I don't often make political predictions. But I will issues this one: the presidential debate on Tuesday night will show if John McCain has any soul left.

I admit it: I used to be one of those liberal reporters/saps in Washington who fancied McCain in the late 1990s and during his 2000 presidential run. In those days, he was about as enjoyable as a senator came--and about as publicly candid. And it was fun to watch him poke the GOP in the eye on campaign finance reform and tobacco. It's not as if I believed he was worth voting for in a general election; he was still archly conservative in important ways. But he was indeed a different type of Republican and provided entertaining company in the Green Room or on the campaign trail.

Those days are long gone. McCain leveraged his soul at the end of the 2000 campaign at the GOP convention, when he gave a speech sucking up to George W. Bush, whose campaign had maligned him viciously during the primaries. It was as if a switch was flipped, and McCain realized his only true path to greater power was to make nice (generally) with the Republican establishment and the GOP base. It was a calculation with some logic to it, as 2008 proved. But it meant he had to jettison his best parts.

So we're left today with a fellow who still appears to believe he is a straight-talking maverick--when he is actually just another pol who will say practically anything to get elected and who has turned his campaign over to the sort of whatever-it-takes political operatives he once derided.

snip//

Will McCain bring his cavalcade of mischaracterizations to the debate Tuesday night? Will he beat the Bill Ayres drum? Bang the Jeremiah Wright tambourine? His campaign advisers now obviously believe that with McCain slipping in the polls he can only win by delegitimizing Barack Obama and that he should throw whatever he can at him, be it true or not.

McCain once declared, "I will not take the low road to the highest office in the land." And not long ago his wife Cindy said, "None of this negative stuff though, you won't see it coming out of our side at all." But his campaign is taking a hard turn toward the low road and the "negative stuff." And the question for Tuesday night is whether McCain will bring his slime bucket to the debate? Will the John McCain of 2008 completely and utterly turn his back on the John McCain of the past?

If he does, he will be even more of a hollow man than he has already become.

[LiberalAndProud]

1. Hollow Man with hollow eyes ... John McCain.

He has sold his soul to the Gangrenous Old Party and it shows.

[babylonsister]

2. I realize a lot of effort goes into even wanting this job, but at

the expense of their honor and integrity? He lost most of those qualities years ago after the dirty campaign of 2000; now he's finishing up the job.