Maverick No More

One of Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s latest advertisements claims Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s only accomplishment in the Illinois State Legislature was a bill pushing sex education for kindergartners. Not only is the Arizona senator’s advertisement incredibly misleading (dare we say the senator is lying?), but is also more evidence McCain has abandoned his idealistic campaigning principles we enjoyed so much back in 2000.

The reality is that Obama’s bill sought to protect young children from pedophiles by teaching them the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touching.

Does anyone really believe McCain and his crew of lobbyists and advisors didn’t know this? Does anyone think this isn’t crass, immoral politicking and lying at its worst?

Back in 2000, John McCain lost the South Carolina GOP primary race to George W. Bush after the latter smeared him and his family. Bush’s campaign ran push pulls asking leading questions about McCain, questioning his adopted daughter and playing to racist fears.

McCain denounced those tactics then, but eight years later he’s embraced those odious tactics of dishonest campaigning. For someone who tells the story of his time in a POW camp so often, he seems to have forgotten the reason he was there in the first place: as a protector of the values that make this country great.

America wasn’t built on destroying political opponents through fear and lies. America was built on cooperation, trust, and the freedom of expression. Obama may not be the perfect candidate, but his unwillingness to engage in mudslinging of the voraciousness practiced by John McCain and his campaign is at least some testament to his ideals.
McCain’s campaign is raising a stink about Senator Obama’s recent comment that “You can’t put lipstick on a pig,” in reference to McCain’s political similarities to President Bush, whom the Arizona senator has voted with 90 percent of the time.

McCain thinks the comment was somehow directed at Sarah Palin, the one-year governor of Alaska and recently chosen vice presidential candidate for the Republicans. Palin likes to say, as she did in her convention speech, that the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick.

What’s really sad, however, is that John McCain himself has used the lipstick-on-a-pig line in reference to a women: Hillary Clinton, last year, when decrying the idea of universal health care.

McCain has changed his positions on many things--even the actions of his choice for Vice President. Sarah Palin, whose only experience besides governing Alaska for a year, was as mayor of a small town of 9,000, criticized by McCain for seeking and receiving so many earmarks, at least $27 million worth.

We don’t believe there’s anything wrong with political leaders getting funds to improve their cities and states, but for a man who was so vehemently opposed to earmarks to now champion Palin as a reformer and anti-earmark crusader is disingenuous at best.

Either McCain never really had a problem with earmarks or he’s willing to overlook his ideals in order to pander to the religious and social right of his party.

Governor Palin was even for the Bridge to Nowhere--that most infamous of earmarks - before she was against it.

Remember when McCain was in a tizzy because Obama suggested we all properly inflate our tires to help save gas?

McCain claimed that wasn’t real policy - small things like that weren’t enough. But last April, McCain said turning out lights out five minutes earlier could save energy and reduce our dependence on the Mid-East oil tycoons.

McCain has even flipped himself around on privatization (one of his few switches for the better). In 2004, the senator campaigned to privatize Social Security despite the overwhelming evidence it was a terrible idea. In 2007 while campaigning in Sioux City, Iowa, the senator claimed to have never supported privatizing Social Security. Perhaps this one can be forgiven.

In McCain?s case, these flips and flops are only done in order to pander to his party and to voters. McCain was a little too mavericky for the GOP establishment, so he began the process of lurching to the right. That’s where Sarah Palin comes in, the anti-choice creationist who opposes putting polar bears on the endangered species list.

This is not the John McCain we remember. This is a new John McCain, the McCain who will do anything to win, even if it means turning his back on all the values and principles we were so attracted to in the first place.

Whatever the senator used to represent back in 2000 - his maverick appeal, his straight talking, his military credentials - have all been thoroughly tarnished if not destroyed by his current campaign.

It’s sad and pathetic to see someone once so respected fall so far. Worse than any scandal of the flesh, where a politician is disgraced and sent packing from their position of power, John McCain’s scandal is of the heart - he’s changed himself so much in order to win, he’s unrecognizable.

And that, as the senator’s political opponents might put it, is change, but it’s not the kind of change we expected from Senator John McCain.