Have You Also Had Enough?

If I hear one more accolade about McCain’s prisoner of war "bio" one more time, that will be it. And he's so "modest," they say. So much so that we must hear over and over about his POW experience of over 40 years ago as if it were yesterday. Does he think we owe him the presidency because he "sacrificed" for his country? His bad luck was to get shot down. Our bad luck is that he’s now running for president.

My definition of hero has always been someone who saves someone else's life. He only managed to save his own. Yeah, he served his country and he served his time in the Hanoi Hilton. But there were over 600 other guys in that prisoner of war camp, and McCain was no better and no worse than anyone else there, but lucky to live through it as most of the others did.

Now McCain has suddenly, after 26 years in Congress become a "reformer." How ridiculous is it to talk about cleaning up Washington when your own party has owned it for so many years? Does McCain imagine we can make ourselves believe he had nothing to do with the last 8 years? I guess he does. He is confident he can disassociate himself from Bush. At 72, his memory may be failing more than ours. And so he gives us all the old platitudes, some vague promises of cutting our taxes (was he talking to his wife on that particular subject?), and a degree of pandering to the far right that makes me wonder how we could possibly expect anything better than what Bush gave us. It could even be worse. A 72-year old man who's had four bouts of cancer—with an eager, ambitious Palin on the sidelines. Yikes!

What is most troubling about McCain right now, aside from no one recognizing any resemblance to a McCain some people once liked, is that he is so hungry for the office that I think he would do just about anything to get it. Palin is part of that. Having so many of the Rove people around him in addition to the many big-time lobbyists, is another. His campaign is playing dirty as only the religious right do, and I only hope that brains can trump this time around. McCain reiterates that he would rather win a war and lose an election, but his actions attest to the fact that he would rather win an election and lose a country.