(If I were Barack Obama, I would approve this ad.)
Senator McCain, from the beginning of this campaign we have made a point of honoring your service to this country. We have done so for two compelling reasons. The first is the obvious--you earned it. The second is that we did not want to see a repeat of what happened in the 2004 election when the service of John Kerry, a man who served with honor in the same war you did, was smeared by political hacks. You had been subjected to the same kind of smears in the 2000 primaries when these same dark forces spread false rumors about your child and darkly suggested that you had emerged from your captivity as some kind of Manchurian candidate. Because of your experience with such gutter politics, you nobly if vainly came to John Kerry’s defense in 2004.
But now just four years later, we look for that same noble soldier, but cannot find him. He seems to have disappeared into that gutter himself. What your communist captors could not achieve in five years, it seems your political handlers have achieved in five months. They have made you break with the faith of your fathers. Rather than starve you, they fed you on the drug of ambition. The results became apparent from the first of your campaign for president when you began to turn on yourself, betraying your previous stands on taxes, immigration, and most alarming of all, torture. Soon you were in thrall to the scoundrels around you and questioning your opponent’s patriotism.
This unseemly behavior might be dismissed as the maneuverings of a typical politician too long in pursuit of the elusive prize of higher office. But you were never supposed to be a typical politician. You were supposed to be the maverick, the man who marched to the sound of his own drummer and inspired us all to march along behind you. But since you secured the nomination you lusted after for so long, we cannot march behind you because we cannot find you, Senator. You have totally disappeared behind the smiling face of instant celebrity. We watch you uncomfortably shuffle beside your vice presidential nominee and force yourself to laugh at her repetitive jokes that surely must echo the brainwashing techniques of your North Vietnamese captors. We watch you numbly nod as she makes claims as wild as the propaganda the communists once demanded you swill for them.
Like your old prison mate Tom Moe who watched you through a hole in the door as they returned you from your torture sessions, we look for a sign that they haven’t broken you. We look through our TV screens for a thumbs-up to let us know that you are still the good patriot we once knew you to be, but you’re not there.
In your place is a woman you’ve chosen to be a heartbeat away from the presidency at one of the most challenging times in our nation’s history. A woman we hardly know. A woman you hardly know. A woman who runs a state that is less than 1/10th the size of New York City. A woman who runs a state that thrives during gas crises while the rest of America suffers. A woman who runs a state where politicians habitually buy their popularity with tax dollars from the other 49 states. A woman who runs a state that is further out of the mainstream of American cultural life than any state in the union.
We look at this woman and wonder how anyone who claims to put country first could honestly put her so dangerously close to running the free world. We look at this woman and wonder how anyone who puts country first could countenance the deceitful and despicable advertising that has gone into promoting her to the American voter. But you're not there, Senator. They have locked your spirit, your integrity, your decency away inside a small, dark cell.
The scariest thing of all, John McCain? If you win this election with the smears, hypocrisies, and lies you’ve traded for the faith of your fathers, you will take our entire nation inside that cell with you.