Senator McCain,
I’m really not all that sorry that you lost the presidential election.
I admit that there was a time when I would have gratefully accepted you as my president. Back then, you really were someone who believed in the right thing…or at least you honestly made me believe you were.
The Rove-Bush machine completely steamrollered you in 1994. You would have thought that your anger and relative helplessness at what they’d done to you would have steeled your resolve against ever using those tactics.
But then, this year, you actually won your primaries…due in large part to your previous history and the manner in which Bush and Cheney completely fucked up the White House.
You were close. So you asked the Republican Party to help you win.
That was your first big mistake. First, the RNC has no love for you, and never has. The fact that you were their candidate didn’t thrill many of the upper echelon, but they’d figured they could try to help you, if only to stay in power. Next, their only current method of projecting power is negativity and fear. For someone like you, that message is an error. I thought you were about experience and never giving up against tough obstacles and doing what is right…not just expediency. About fighting the good, honorable fight.
So your RNC “allies” decided to talk about a tenuous connection to a guy who bombed some buildings in the US over 30 years ago. Tried to make your opponent sound like a bad guy. Allowed your machine to talk about the fact that he was an Arab, or Muslim…play on the public’s fears.
And you know what? If you’d been running against Al Gore or John Kerry, that might have even worked.
The problem you ran up against is that Barack Obama is about 950 times more charismatic and charming that both of them put together. Consequently, none of that stuff was able to stick. People LIKE Obama. They didn’t really like Gore (too brainy) and they didn’t really like Kerry (too boring). But Obama? They LOVE him. So the fact that John Kerry decided that Vietnam was a bad thing after he’d been there…and that made him a bad person. But you couldn’t make junk like that stick to Obama.
Then, Obama did an extraordinary thing. He unequivocally respected you. He conceded points to you when he thought you were right. He usually said things like that you were a good man, that you loved your country, that you had served the US faithfully and admirably.
In return, you questioned his loyalty, his friends, his motives.
And the people said “that isn’t John McCain.” Instead of talking issues, you devolved into namecalling and sleazy politics. And the people said “that’s just like Bush.” And you put yourself in a camp with the people who fucked up the country.
But even THEN, you had a chance. All you had to do was choose someone like you. Someone who wasn’t going to knuckle under to machine pressure…someone with credibility, who had some experience like you, and could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you weren’t the bitch of the RNC. And instead of choosing Joe Lieberman, who would have truly put you in the White House, you chose a fundamentalist Christian wacko with no credibility as your second in command.
You could have chosen a man who truly knew about bipartisanship, a guy who, although pissing a bunch of folks off, knew what he believed in, and stood for it, even against his party…just like you. You could have shut a mess of Democrats up…you chose one of theirs for your VP…a guy who had cred in DC. You could have rammed experience and bipartisanship down the Dems’ throats.
But instead? You chose someone who no one even knew before she was tapped. Someone who couldn’t name the three countries in North America. Someone who didn’t know Africa was a continent. Someone who believed that proximity to Russia was an excuse for foreign policy experience. And someone who was rabidly anti-choice, pro-fundamentalist religion.
In doing that, you galvanized the fence-sitters against you. Sure, you delighted some of the folks who would have voted for you just to keep “THAT ONE” out of the White House. But the thoughtful ones, the ones who truly were thinking “Hmm…McCain might be a Republican I can get behind…” all of them said “There’s no fucking way I can allow that woman anywhere near a position of power in this country.”
And you sealed your loss.
You were right in saying “There were lots of things we did wrong.”
When I watched your concession speech, I was struck by two things. The first, was that I said “There’s John McCain…where the fuck was he for the last 6 months?” The next was that when you mentioned Obama’s name, your audience booed. They actually booed. And the look on your face, and your body language said it all: “How could I have sided with these people?” You, again, realized that you’d given up your morals, and your sense of what was right, all for a shot at an office that could have been yours if you’d just been who you’ve always been.
Yes, you’re a hothead. And yes, you’re sometimes on the wrong side of some issues. But you had honor, and we all knew it.
You gave THAT up. You surrounded yourself with people you didn’t like, didn’t believe in, all for what you incorrectly thought was your best chance of winning an election.
And that, Mr. McCain, is really the last judgment on the campaign. In a high-stress, very important situation, you made the wrong choice.
And that’s a quality people won’t tolerate in a president. You made the wrong choice in taking a Bush/Rove way to the presidency, you made the wrong choice in choosing a running mate, you made the wrong choice accepting public money, and you made the wrong choice rushing to DC to help solve the economic crisis, and just managed to make yourself look powerless.
You’re a good person. I know you are. And I used to believe that you’d always do what you thought was right. But this campaign proved otherwise. It proved that you’d knuckle under to the same bullshit.
You’ve already realized that there’s no further political future for you. You’ll keep your senate seat for a few more years, then probably quietly fade away.
That line from Batman is definitely true. “You stick around long enough, you watch yourself become the bad guy.”
In the meantime, Barack Obama will effect that change that you really wanted. And you can be a part of it. A big part. Show that you were as good as your word.
I’m glad you lost…but I’m sorry for what the campaign did to you…or what you did to yourself because of it.
Good luck, Senator.
Posted by Glenn 