What happened to John McCain?

These days it seems everyone is asking the same question: what on earth happened to John McCain? Where is the forsaken warrior, the strangest of all political beasts, who vowed to fight an honourable campaign, to never succumb to the temptation to smear, to project an honest platform, and let the American people adjudicate.
That John McCain, if he ever existed, has long since vanished in the Beltway dust, and if McCain is fighting a war inside himself, there is no evidence to suggest it. Any pretence of honour in this campaign disappeared amidst the screams of “celebrity” last July.

Needless to say, the Barack Obama of the campaign trail is the evil twin of the Barack Obama of the 2004 convention speech. Despite the panicking of the Democratic establishment who fear Obama is not responding to attacks with enough haste – because they still believe that’s why John Kerry lost in 04 – Obama has proven himself to be well capable of launching offensives of his own, and by the latest count Obama had actually pedalled more negative ads than McCain. In fairness, McCain was first down the low road. Obama took quite some time to follow him, but follow him he did, and he seems perfectly comfortable there.

However, Obama’s negativity is still largely reactive, his offensives generally counter-attacks. Contrary to the whines of the GOP establishment, when Obama goes negative he rarely appears as cynical and vindictive as McCain. For starters, Obama does not lie nearly as much. Obama’s campaign, now even bereft of much of the idealistic bi-partisanship he is famous for, is far more honest than McCain’s. Obama’s candidacy is still premised on a vision and a hope. The McCain candidacy has changed its raison d’être so many times, it is physically impossible to assess where he actually stands at any given time.

For example, once upon a time McCain opposed offshore drilling. He came around to supporting it, as is perfectly reasonable, when conditions on the ground changed. However, thereafter “drill, baby, drill” became one of the fundamental tenets of his campaign. Such a reversal stretches the imagination and insults the voters’ intelligence.

Just this week, McCain said he opposed any more federal bailouts of America’s troubled financial institutions. The next day, when AIG received federal assistance, he supported it lest he appear out of touch with the needs of the American people. Then McCain, apparently assuming voters have the memories of goldfish, said that Obama had not taken a stand on the financial crisis. That allegation is absolutely false as Obama has been discussing it continuously all week. Just yesterday, McCain said in a thoroughly unintelligible speech that the Fed should cease being the source of bailouts. Following the various political stances of John McCain is liable to leave one with motion sickness.

All the while this political merry-go-round is flanked by incessant attacks on Obama.

There are countless other examples of the chameleon-like political persona of John McCain. John Kerry, who knows a thing or two about being a “flip-flopper”, pointedly made note of them all in his convention speech. The most disappointing of all is immigration. McCain, who has always been the champion of the immigrant at great political risk, abandoned his position during the primaries in favour of irrational and iterative GOP orthodoxy. McCain, who was once the standard-bearer of reason on this subject, now supports “strong borders” as if the Arizona desert, Black Hawk helicopters, US Customs and Border Protection patrols, and, perhaps scariest of all, patrolling “minutemen”, do not serve as enough discouragement to stop the hopeful from striving for freedom and prosperity. It will never work, so logically the US should opt for a practical solution that does not sell-out the American people or American values and America’s promise. There is clearly little hope for such a resolution when once rational voices now parrot the logic of insane and impractical immigration control. Clearly a significant portion of Americans never consumed the lesson that America assimilated the Irish, Poles, Chinese, Japanese, Italians, and Jews, and so too it will assimilate Mexicans- of which millions are already flag-waving Americans.

McCain’s duplicity on immigration is so lurid he even accused Obama of scuttling an agreement in a Spanish-language ad. This could not be further than the case. The elephant McCain represents trampled all over immigration reform.

Unfortunately, Obama’s response to this was a spectacular own-goal. Rather than take the opportunity to illustrate McCain’s insincerity to Hispanic-Americans, he poured fuel on racial fires, and attempted to draw an untenable link between McCain and Rush Limbaugh on immigration. Despite McCain’s disappointing change of heart on immigration, no such link exists. However, in what is perhaps one of the more bizarre moments of this campaign, Rush Limbaugh himself emerged from his radio studio to accuse Obama of “stoking racial antagonism” in the Wall Street Journal. Yes, Obama did take Limbaugh’s quotes out of context, and Obama should not have run the ad. But the fact that Limbaugh can write such an article and make such claims with a straight face proves that the shamelessness of the hypocrite is boundless. Limbaugh has famously pedalled fear on the subject, which makes his apparent outrage all the more striking. How can a figure that spends so much time spewing abuse and vitriol be so childishly sensitive? Surely, such a character, who spends his entire time at the coalface, expects to get muddied.

But that’s the modern incarnation of the GOP. They claim Obama is igniting class warfare but really they are yet again igniting cultural warfare. Representatives of the Republican Party stood on stage in St Paul and hurled insults at the Democrats, few of which were actually witty, most of which were downright mean-spirited and cynical. They explicitly sought to play on the fears of Middle America. The theme that most clearly came out of the GOP Convention was “small town mayor” versus “community organizer”; or rather “American” versus “cosmopolitan.”
The Republican Party is a veteran of such tactics. Nevertheless, the incumbent crop is not seeking to build consensuses like Nixon and Reagan did. Rather, they are trying to divide and conquer. They are on a quest for 50.1% and they are totally apathetic about the condition of the country afterwards. As is plainly evident, governance is not the GOP’s strong suit anymore. They are purely focused on elections, and though electorally adept, they are pushing the electorate closer and closer to the wire each time.

Meanwhile, McCain and Palin have transformed politics from a spin machine to an outright lie machine.

Almost every facet of their collective platform is founded upon a falsehood. McCain ceded the experience argument when he picked Palin, and by making the pick he effectively ceded the judgement argument too. However, Barack Obama clearly had some worthwhile advice: running for office on the mantra of change has huge potential for success. Thus, the new merchants of change were born: John McCain and Sarah Palin. They are going to reform Washington it is claimed. How exactly they will manage the task is unclear and, like everything else, subject to change.

Ignoring the incredulity generated by McCain/Palin’s assertion that they are the change ticket; the stream of lies and nonsense being advanced actually beggars belief.

Palin, according to McCain, is America’s foremost expert on energy. If that’s the case, God help the US. For an authority on energy, she sounds strikingly shallow as “drill, baby, drill” will hardly rescue America from a carbon famine and herald an age of energy independence. Palin has displayed scant knowledge of the other sources of energy, which the US will need to be independent, while her statements on oil and gas have hardly been professorial.

The governor has a habit of saying “I told Congress “thanks, but no thanks, on that bridge to nowhere”. This is sheer fantasy. During her gubernatorial campaign Palin was decidedly in favour of the bridge, even telling residents that she didn’t think they were “nowhere”. It seems unclear exactly why she turned against the bridge, and it is unlikely she’ll present the truthful answer, but it was either because Alaskan opinion at large felt the money could be better spent, or because Congress itself said “thank, but no thanks.”

McCain likes to present has running mate as some sort of inveterate soldier of fortune in the battle against earmarks. But really McCain is trying to construct the political version of The Lord of the Rings. As Mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a Washington lobbyist – one of the same ilk she is supposedly going to destroy – to help procure earmarks. Under her reign Wasilla received so much in federal goodies, its resident were among the highest per-capita recipients of federal earmarks in the United States.

Palin might also be heard telling cheering crowds that she sold the Alaska Governor’s luxury jet on E-Bay. Yet, she did no such thing.

As governor she claimed to undertake a world tour of sorts, visiting Kuwait, Iraq, Germany, and Ireland. Except the extent of her trip to Iraq was a mere a stop at the border, while her visit to Ireland actually consisted of a pit-stop in Shannon Airport where she never even disembarked. It was the first time she had ever received a passport.

It is on foreign policy where Sarah Palin’s failings are most glaring and the attempts to taper over them most extravagant. As Andrew Sullivan has repeatedly pointed out, there is no evidence of Palin ever taking a stand on any issue pertaining to international relations, yet it is claimed she will bring a tough brand of straight-talking diplomacy to the global stage. What are the foundations of the Palin Doctrine of US diplomacy? What intellectual assumptions does she make? What principles guide her view of the world? Where have they previously been exhibited? There has been no meaningful attempt on behalf of the McCain camp to address these questions precisely because there is no answer. Rather, it has been claimed that Palin is an authority on Russia by virtue of Alaska being the closest US state to the largest country in the world. Many once plausible commentators lost any pretence of credibility when they supported this claim. Of all the lies and distortions that have been advanced since Palin’s nomination, this is the most outrageous and also most disrespectful to the people of the US and the world. The tempatation to utterly mock this claim is all too easy to succumb to. But in actuality, it is no laughing matter. It is highly possible that Sarah Palin might soon be involved in summitry with Russia and China, or in talks with Iran. The next president will almost certainly have to deal with a crisis in Pakistan. The next president will also have to confront a world that drifts closer and closer towards power-political, rather than ideological, configurations. It is has been said over the last two years that the American people are reluctant to elect a foreign policy novice. Yet there is now a very palpable chance that they’ll elect a vice president and would be president, who is not a novice but exists outside the realm of reality altogether. She inhabits a world where proximity confers knowledge on foreign affairs. She lives on a parallel plane where coming from a state with oil and gas renders you an expert on energy. And she demonstrates a belief that lying makes something true.

This is the woman that John McCain picked to be his deputy. This is the web of lies that now binds the McCain campaign together. Every time they get called into account for their dishonesty they simply cry sexism or snobbery, and the lies just get repeated. When members of the media dare to question Palin’s experience, the spectre of sexism is always used to patch over the governor’s lack of basic fitness for the White House. Simultaneously large crowds are continuously treated to the thoroughly discredited line, “I told Congress thanks, but no thanks.” Not only are Palin’s claims overwhelmingly disproven, but John McCain too is now completely discredited. Of all the reversals McCain has pulled off due to political expediency this is the most damaging. McCain wishes “to inspire a generation of Americans to serve a cause greater than their self-interest.” Lately he has been setting a poor example. In his most important “presidential decision” so far, he opted for someone with a fundamental lack of experience, no demonstrated intellectual curiosity, and no qualms about being dishonest. Indeed, what on earth happened McCain?

On the campaign trail McCain likes to say of his running mate: “I can’t wait to introduce her to Washington.” But has she ever been introduced to John McCain?