Sunday, April 18, 2010

RIP: Paying final tribute to John McCain's deceased integrity

by Leonard Pitts in the Arizona Daily Star

McCain's fawning liberal media is finally turning on him and calling him out on his flip-flopping, even calling him an avatar like JD had initially labeled him. Some excerpts -

We are gathered here today to pay our final respects to John McCain's integrity.

It died recently - turned a triple somersault, stiffened like an exclamation point, fell to the floor with its tongue hanging out - when the senator told Newsweek magazine, "I never considered myself a maverick." This, after the hard-fought presidential campaign of 2008 in which McCain, his advertising team, his surrogates and his running mate all but tattooed the "M" word on their foreheads.

Indeed, not only did they call McCain a maverick, but so did the subtitle of his 2003 memoir. Heck, his campaign plane when he ran for president back in 1999 was dubbed Maverick One. Yet there he is in the April 12, 2010, edition of Newsweek, page 29, top of the center column: "I never considered myself a maverick."

And his integrity kicked twice and was still.

The death was not unexpected. McCain's integrity had been in ill health for a long time. Once, it had been his most attractive political trait, drawing smitten prose from political reporters and intrigued attention from voters sick of the same old, same old from politicians who would bend like Gumby for the electorate's approval.

Two things here: One, all the nattering about flip-flops aside, there is nothing wrong with changing one's opinion. Two, McCain is hardly unique. Indeed, they have a name for people who change their opinions in order to win votes: politicians.

But these are not just changes of opinion we're talking about. Rather, they are betrayals of core principle. And while that might be politics as usual, there is a higher standard for the politician who has positioned himself as a man of uncommon integrity, a purveyor of straight talk in a nation hungry for same. When that man panders, the disappointment is keen.

"I never considered myself a maverick?!" Wow. With those words, McCain completes his transmutation into an avatar of all that is wrong in American politics.

May his integrity rest in peace.

Read the entire article

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