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While the 2008 political season has featured unfair, unseemly and unrepentant attacks on candidates from both parties, it has been the campaign of Sen. John McCain that has put out the most unfair, the most unseemly and the most unrepentant attacks on Sen. Barack Obama ... and also the most untrue.
Sen. McCain has made himself culpable in the distortions and slander by plastering his face on the attack ads with a sound clip saying he approves the message. He has voiced misleading and grossly inaccurate talking points at every rally he holds. So, in the spirit of Emile Zola, I hand down my indictment.
Sen. McCain, j’accuse. I accuse you of hypocrisy. You have in Gov. Sarah Palin a running mate who, by her own admission, sends checks to every Alaskan with their share of the money the state made by selling its oil. And yet you call your opponent a socialist for wanting to send checks to Americans who are actually in need of tax relief.
All this while you talk about creating trading regulations that will punish CEOs for mistakes made by junior traders. The common man can do no wrong, Senator? I think I read something like that before in the Communist manifesto.
Sen. McCain, j’accuse. I accuse you of mismanagement. You could have been competitive in this campaign. But your campaign has been mismanaged from the start. You didn’t even try to win in some of the early primaries. After you locked it up in March, you wasted the six months you should have spent looking for a running mate, then picked Gov. Palin in the eleventh hour. Since then, your campaign has been one of tactics, not strategy, unless your strategy is to use every tactic you can think of and hope one works.
You “suspended” your campaign in the week of the first debate and tried to postpone it. You snubbed David Letterman for Katie Couric. You tried implicating Sen. Obama in the deplorable actions of Dr. William Ayers.
You tried calling his economic plan socialist, an accusation met with scorn by Socialist Party candidate Brian Moore on “The Colbert Report.” You’ve spent so much time talking about “Joe the Plumber,” any sane person would begin to think HE was your running mate. It’s so bad it’s almost like Sen. Obama is playing with a deck of poker cards while you’re playing with a deck of Uno cards.
Sen. McCain, j’accuse. I accuse you of being a sellout. Over the past 20 months or so, you have completely transformed yourself from being a legitimate political maverick into the partisan hack who trails Sen. Obama in every credible poll. You have sold yourself out to the neoconservative war-hawks who use the military as both sword and shield, idolize the service of the soldiers who defend your right to turn them into objects of worship and hide behind a false sense of patriotism. You sold your soul to people who think their political ideas are the “One True Path,” and are ready and willing to call any opposition to these ideas “un-American.”
You have pinned all your hopes of election on the same group of advisers who gained and retained the presidency for George W. Bush in hopes of gaining the support of a “base” of those who are the most conservative people in the world outside of the Pope.
Sen. McCain, I can understand your erratic, partisan behavior in the primaries, but once you secured the Republican nomination, you could done whatever you wanted. Your reputation is one that defies the Republican establishment. Just because a choice is unpopular with Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly doesn’t mean it’s a bad choice. They are NOT your base, Senator. They are the crazy Republicans, the partisan hacks, the people who you have never tried to appease and more often than not angered!
If anything, Sen. McCain, you deserve to lose this election for the simple fact you are NOT really Sen. John Sidney McCain III. You are a completely different animal, a sheep in wolf’s clothing, if you will. The authentic John McCain, the real John “Maverick” McCain, might have stood a chance. But you, sir, whatever and whoever you are, do not.
God help America, no matter the turnout and the results of this election. He knows this divided and fractured electorate needs it.
Thank you for your considered opinion. You are correct: What a Faustian choice Sen. McCain made when he abandoned his personal principles and fine character to try to appeal to the most radically conservative groups in our nation. The culmination of his disappointing behavior was his choice of the unqualified Sarah Palin, selected solely to shore up his approval ratings among the Sean Hannity set. Country First indeed. McCain's own choices contributed to the election outcome.