It's Going To Be A Long Hot Summer....

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Friday August 01, 2008 · 7:53 AM PDT

2008/08/01 · 07:53

We know now that John McCain has successfully completed his transformation from the "maverick" to the "clone". I'll be honest. I've never really liked McCain and the reasons were amorphous. There was something about his self-aggrandizement as the guy who wasn't afraid to stand up to the leaders of his own party that just never rang true to me. And his constant references to his long years of service to his country both in and out uniform wore thin really fast. His use of his years of imprisonment in the Hanoi Hilton were used as a political prop to be trotted out on cue. He always came across to me as smug and self-righteous with the unspoken idea that the country owed him big time.

It is true that he managed to alienate a good portion of the Republican base with some of his positions and statement that were heretical to conservative orthodoxy. But when pushed, he almost always fell in step with his Republican senatorial brethren. The maverick image he strove so hard to project was in reality, I think, just another clever tool in his own political bag of tricks. His goal for the longest time has always been the presidency and the maverick side was to establish his bona fides with the independents and some Democrats, and the good little soldier was to maintain his Republican in good standing status.

Sometimes he didn't quite maintain that delicate balancing act and wound up being smacked down by his own party. The most glaring and infamous example was during his campaign for the republican nomination in 2000 and found himself on the receiving end of the Rovian attack machine in full bore. At the time, his reaction to the smears and lies was one of absolute anger which he gave vent to on a number of occasions. It took a long time before he could bring himself to embrace George Bush both literally and figuratively. But again it was out of political expediency.

It has been said that those who seek the highest office in the land must have a fire the belly. But it can either be the fire that drives the seeker towards greatness for America or the fire that envelops the seeker with in a conflagration that destroys one's principles and self-respect.

It seems to me that McCain is being consumed by the latter of those two fires. And he has been blinded by the brightness of the flames and has had his soul seared by the intensity of the fire.
How else to explain the John McCain we now see before us?

It's going to be a long, hot summer in more ways than one. Not only will the heat be from the stoking of the flames of racial prejudice but also from the heat emanating from a man self-immolating.

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