Nov 24, 2008
When McCain Was McCain
Whose reputation was left most tarnished by this campaign? Rudy Giuliani, who went from “America’s Mayor” to “America’s Least Favorite 9/11-humping GOP candidate?”1 Reverend Jeremiah Wright, head of a magnificently large congregation, who was unfairly lambasted in the media for a few scant seconds of video footage, and was then fairly lambasted in the media for a horrific, implosive, supernova-like speech at the National Press Club? Bill Clinton, who used to represent the long-lost promise of the pre-Bush era? His performance these past few months—the “fairy tale” comment, linking Obama’s primary win to Jesse Jackson, his endlessly inaccurate retelling of Hillary’s retelling of the sniper myth—was an end-of-innocence eye-opener, on par with seeing your parents have sex or watching Aeris die, for kids of my generation who spent years of this decade huddling for warmth missing the ’90s. It’s not just that it was all horribly mean-spirited; it was so obviously mean-spirited, as if Slick Willie had run out of lubrication after years in the doghouse. Where was the grinning wonder who could debate the definition of “is” with a smiling face?Enter John McCain. When he started winning his party’s primary, McCain stopped being McCain and became something else. Maybe he’s just getting older. Maybe the thrill of the fight—being the underdog, racing against his own party—kept him young, so the second that he became the anointed one, all the energy just sapped out. (Something similar happened to McCain’s fellow right-wing hero, Jack Bauer, who spent about four seasons chasing viewers, one season wowing them, and then one season chasing them away.) Or maybe he’s just always been a bigtime douchebag, and it’s only now, when there’s no one worse around to absorb media attention, that it’s all coming out.
McCain and vice-presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska in O'Fallon, Missouri (stltoday.com)
I don’t think so. I can remember in 2004, an ugly time in history, reading about McCain and the gay marriage ban. He didn’t just say it was wrong; he said it was “antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans.” In a world in which the president was talking about defending the institution of marriage from activist judges—which is kind of like defending the institution of spelunking from firefly ninjas; or defending the institution of friendship from Hitler—this was like the voice of a loving relative talking you out of a coma nightmare, reminding you that there was a real world where Republicans stood for things and Democrats stood for things and they could argue about those things until the end of time, but that all of those things had a basic ring of truth. McCain wasn’t the Republican who Democrats could love; he was the Politician who Sane People could love, cutting through the endless bounds of bullshit and trying to just, well, talk to people. That was straight talk, and no bullshit. Now, he’s all bullshit, all the time. Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010 is a more likely vision of the future than John McCain’s 2013.