The wheels aren't just coming off the Straight Talk Express, they're being shot out and not just by Democratic snipers either. As is evident in this startling piece by George Will in today's Washington Post, there seems to be very few dyed-in-the-wool Republicans who think much of John McCain. He may have the tepid support of the Neocons and the right-wing fundamentalists who checked the actuarial tables before imposing Sarah Palin on him but the sane people in the Republican party know who and what the real John McCain is.
McCain's problems with establishment Republicans began almost from the start of his political career in Washington. McCain's biggest problem is that he doesn't play well with others. And in the collegial atmosphere of both the House and the Senate that is not a good thing. He is also burdened with both an over-sized ego and an overarching certitude that he is always right. Add to that a hair-trigger temper and you have, as he himself once put it, someone who is "not going to be voted Miss Congeniality".
He made a virtue out of necessity by styling himself as a "maverick". That not only afforded him some political cover back home with the staunch Republican voters in Arizona but also fit in nicely with his evolving auto-mythology where he is the daring fighter pilot shot down over enemy territory, imprisoned for five years during which he underwent both physical and psychological tortures. And like all myths and legends there is always some foundation in reality upon which the rest of the tale can be built. And by cultivating a "just one of the guys", slaps on the back, barbecue-throwing Everyman persona with the press, his half-truth, half-myth autobiography was carved in stone.
But now as he desperately fights to be elected president, he has been forced to throw off the various trappings of honor and forthrightness with which he has cloaked himself for so many years. His naked ambition has left him morally naked and totally exposed for all to see. And like the old fairy tale about the Emperor's New Clothes, you will still have thousands seeing him not in his nakedness but as the image he has so carefully imprinted upon their collective consciousness.
But alas and alack, some in his own crowd are starting to shout out the truth. I'll let George Will have the last word...
It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?
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