Stack your pennies on the rail

22Mar07

Hey Maverick, you ain’t that dangerous.

It’s been a while since John McCain’s lauded Straight Talk Express has run on anything more substantial than a few scant fumes, as this NY Times blog report shows. Seven years after his first presidential bid, McCain no longer embodies his well-worn, valiant, national-hero-cum-nonconformist-politician image. If anything, McCain’s devolution into self-parody strikes me as a little sad.

I genuinely admired the guy in the lead-up to the 2000 Republican primary. He exuded an energy none of the other smug GOPers could muster. His work (alongside Sen. Russ Feingold) to bring about campaign finance reform demonstrated McCain’s propensity for results. Also, the former naval aviator went through hell as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. These things, in addition to McCain’s personable nature, garnered him trust and respect. Had I been older, I would have considered voting for him.

McCain began to lose my confidence shortly after that unsuccessful presidential bid, when some startling news surfaced. Perhaps not so startling if you’re familiar with Karl Rove’s dirty tactics, but I was ignorant of “Bush’s Brain” at that early stage. The upshot: phone pollers working for the Bush campaign called South Carolinians in the days before that state’s primary and insinuated McCain’s daughter was both illegitimate and black. She’s actually an adopted Bangladeshi, but it didn’t seem to matter to many racist and misinformed Southerners.

My confidence in McCain dwindled when he neglected to denounce the smear attack in any one of the many media outlets available to him. He uttered hardly a peep and, as you can see in the below picture, all bad blood with Dubya dissipated in time. I sat by in horror, suddenly realizing McCain’s strategy: defend Bush’s foreign policy with steadfast zeal, wait him out, and run for president again when he’s safely out of the way.

The 2007 edition of John McCain looks a lot like editions past and has the same soft-spoken tone of voice. But now, rather than hinting at a cool sense of confidence, that voice betrays a whimper. McCain panders to the Christian right like there’s no tomorrow (which I suppose makes sense, if you believe in the Rapture) and stubbornly defends the Iraqi War. I’m not shocked to see McCain’s metamorphosis into a pure politician, since it eventually happens to even the most staunch lone wolves. The senator’s remarkable tendency to flip-flop (hey, remember that phrase?) has been well documented.

[Left: The day the music died.]

The really tragic thing is his free fall into cluelessness. Let’s revisit that NY Times piece…

“Senator McCain, do you think condoms can help prevent the spread of HIV?”

“Gee… I don’t know. Let me get somebody to find out my position on that.”

This man cannot become the leader of the free world. The results could be embarrassing. Seriously, I’d sooner support Rudy Giuliani, a man whose political experience* has yet to ascend past the city level.

Here’s hoping John McCain regains the gumption and force of will that once defined him. It would serve him well in his personal life, far, far away from the Oval Office. Go ahead and park the Straight Talk Express in Arizona, there, John. You won’t be able to fit the damned thing into a metered DC parking space anyway.

*Giuliani did serve as a U.S. attorney, famously prosecuting Marc Rich. But that is NOT supposed to be a political position. Alberto Gonzales might say differently, but I digress…

[Right: The Straight Talk Express, back when it stood for something.]

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