The headline sounds a bit presumptuous I must admit but with just 13 days to go until election day and all the polls pointing to an Obama blowout there is little chance of a McCain miracle on election night. However there is still time left for John McCain to salvage his image as a good soldier fighting the good fight for the American people. Over the last month and a half John McCain has allowed his campaign to turn into everything that he claims he is not and railed against in the 2000 Republican Primary, a vehicle to assassinate his opponents character, lie about him and try to win by any means necessary.
From asking "Who is Barack Obama?", allowing the crowds at rallies to turn into an anti-Obama mob and most recently sending out incendiary robocalls in battleground states questioning Barack Obama on everything from his ties to Bill Ayers to record on sex education.
One card that has not been played thus far in this fall campaign by the McCain campaign is the Rev Wright card, Barack Obama’s pastor of 20 years who has been filmed making some loaded charges against the U.S Government. By not talking about Jeremiah Wright on the campaign trail, using him in television ads and mailers, I think a little John McCain circa 2000 is starting to shine through. This may not be the case, he could be simply declining to "go there" because most polls show his personal attacks on Obama are backfiring or maybe just maybe because he honestly believes such things have no place in this campaign.
Whatever the case may be if John McCain wants to end this campaign with some dignity and honor left his best bet is to make the final days of this campaign about what he has done for the American people and what he will do for the American people. If he continues to make this campaign as personal as he is most people won’t feel a bit of sympathy in light of a McCain loss because they will see the defeat of him as the defeat of the Nixon Southern Strategy, the Atwater tactics and the Karl Rove politics. What is unfortunate about this is that John McCain simply does not represent any of the aforementioned, he has taken pride in his reputation as a good man who will not attack his opponents personally but instead stick to the issues that effects the people he wants to serve.
Although I am a Democrat and in fact a very partisan one I still do stand by the belief that John McCain is one of the "good" Republicans, whatever that means. I subscribed to his mailing list during the Republican primaries because he was the only man on stage during those debates that stood up against torture and stood up against his party on a range of issues. Now John McCain has one last chance to end this campaign as the John McCain that I and countless others admire or as an abstract Republican who I can’t wait to beat on November 4th.