Old Man McCain: Updated, Revised and Worrisome

Over the last several months, I've written a series of essays about how U.S. Sen. John McCain was turning out to be one of the worst candidates we've ever seen run for President (for the latest see here and here). His montrous flip flops, the serial mistatements about enormous issues like the difference between Sunni and Shiite, the number of troops in Iraq, his position on Social Security, his vote on the 1986 Immigration Act, his position on Immigration Reform today, his admission that he doesn't know how to use a computer. The list seems endless now.

Add that he loaded up his campaign with active lobbyists, certain to draw negative attention, his bumbling of the rehiring of Mike Murphy, and the new extraordinary set of things this week - well chronicled here by Max Bergman on the Huffington Post - and it all adds up to a man simply not up to the job of running for -- or actually being -- President of the United States. In a recent appearance, I even surmised that the GOP would become so concerned with his performance that there would start to be a quiet movement to replace him at the Convention with another candidate. This moment may be upon us as the media, and the public now has no choice but to confront that there is a man running for President who seems so out of touch with basic facts, reality, his own voting record that one might even conjucture that it would be a grave risk for the United States to put him in charge of the country.

After a Republican era where governing always played 2nd fiddle to politics and power - resulting in one of the worst governments in our history - we all hoped McCain would represent a break from the truly disapointing politics of the Bush era. But his performance these last few months shows that his lack of seriousness and knowledge about policy - even running an ad saying that his energy and drilling proposals would immediately address high gas prices when everyone knows this to be, let us say, not true - shows that the McCain candidacy has itself become an extension of this awful Republican era that did so much to harm the national interests of the United States, leaving us less prosperous, less powerful in the world and certainly less free here at home.

In putting Steve Schmidt, a Bush/Rove protege, in charge of his campaign, McCain has told us all exactly what kind of man he has become, and what kind of Presidency we can expect.