Selling His Soul
Kevin Drum
Mother Jones
SELLING HIS SOUL....Tom Friedman is still pissed off at John McCain campaign:
It’s a campaign now built on turning everything possible into a cultural wedge issue — including even energy policy, no matter how stupid it makes the voters and no matter how much it might weaken America.
I respected McCain’s willingness to support the troop surge in Iraq, even if it was going to cost him the Republican nomination. Now the same guy, who would not sell his soul to win his party’s nomination, is ready to sell every piece of his soul to win the presidency.
So why is McCain doing this? Obvious answer #1: he's just running a standard Republican campaign. Nobody should really be surprised by this. Obvious answer #2: This is hardly the first time McCain has sold his soul. He'll regret it later, of course, but this is just who he is, despite the layers of maverickiness he's managed to cover himself in over the years.
But there's another piece to this. As near as I can tell, McCain, deep in his gut, has convinced himself that Barack Obama is flatly unfit to the president. He's too inexperienced, he's an empty suit, he's naive, and he'll end up surrendering a weakened and declining America to Islamic extremism without a fight. The campaign corollary to this is obvious: the truly honorable course if you love your country is to do whatever it takes to make sure Obama never gets near the Oval Office. If that means running a campaign that sullies your own reputation — well, you just have to suck it up and pay that price. History will eventually exonerate you. In McCain's mind, the fact that he's willing to sacrifice his own reputation is a sign of just how deeply he loves his country.
This is ironic, of course, since it's something of a Messiah complex, exactly the label he's tried to hang around Obama's neck. Less ironic, but a lot scarier, is that it's McCain who would almost certainly accelerate America's Bush-induced decline if he were elected.
(Continued here.)
Mother Jones
SELLING HIS SOUL....Tom Friedman is still pissed off at John McCain campaign:
It’s a campaign now built on turning everything possible into a cultural wedge issue — including even energy policy, no matter how stupid it makes the voters and no matter how much it might weaken America.
I respected McCain’s willingness to support the troop surge in Iraq, even if it was going to cost him the Republican nomination. Now the same guy, who would not sell his soul to win his party’s nomination, is ready to sell every piece of his soul to win the presidency.
So why is McCain doing this? Obvious answer #1: he's just running a standard Republican campaign. Nobody should really be surprised by this. Obvious answer #2: This is hardly the first time McCain has sold his soul. He'll regret it later, of course, but this is just who he is, despite the layers of maverickiness he's managed to cover himself in over the years.
But there's another piece to this. As near as I can tell, McCain, deep in his gut, has convinced himself that Barack Obama is flatly unfit to the president. He's too inexperienced, he's an empty suit, he's naive, and he'll end up surrendering a weakened and declining America to Islamic extremism without a fight. The campaign corollary to this is obvious: the truly honorable course if you love your country is to do whatever it takes to make sure Obama never gets near the Oval Office. If that means running a campaign that sullies your own reputation — well, you just have to suck it up and pay that price. History will eventually exonerate you. In McCain's mind, the fact that he's willing to sacrifice his own reputation is a sign of just how deeply he loves his country.
This is ironic, of course, since it's something of a Messiah complex, exactly the label he's tried to hang around Obama's neck. Less ironic, but a lot scarier, is that it's McCain who would almost certainly accelerate America's Bush-induced decline if he were elected.
(Continued here.)
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