Discussing the extremely harsh tone John McCain has taken against Barack Obama,
Marc Ambinder notes, "The contempt that many McCain aides hold for Barack Obama rivals the contempt that McCain held for Mitt Romney a year ago."
...not to mention George W. Bush, who in 2000 McCain and his advisors viewed with even more contempt than Romney during the primary or Obama now. Notice the pattern here? The McCainiacs whip themselves into a moralistic frenzy against anybody who stands between them and the presidency.
And should that person subsequently become potentially useful in McCain's quest for the presidency (first Bush, now Romney), they can convince themselves that he's not so bad after all.
My only complaint is that this post downplays the extreme self-righteousness of John McCain. No matter what McCain believes in (and it appears to switch a lot, as Steve Benen's McCain flip-flop list now has 71 items) he thinks that he's absolutely right and that his opponents are incomprehensible madmen who hate America. He tends to like issues where that can be the case, like campaign finance reform. How can you oppose that without supporting fat plutocrats? McCain probably figures that he's served his country faithfully for so long that he has earned his above reproach status, and that the only people who can question him are people with more service than him. That service (including the torture) has created a pervasive moral superiority about the man, which has kinda grown stale as it's become clear that he really doesn't stand for anything aside from a Hemingway sort of military greatness. I have to hand it to him...most people who see war tend to come away thinking it's insane. John McCain saw combat and seems to have come to the conclusion that we should do it more often. Maybe it's just bloodlust.
I'm beginning to think that McCain feels his country owes him the presidency, and that Obama's ascendancy is depriving him of the natural fulfillment to a lifetime of service. That accounts for quite a bit of his recent behavior, but if it's true I'm not sure his paens to serving a cause greater than one's self will have any resonance. He's beginning to look like Hillary Clinton in the wrong ways--old, bitter, angry, entitled, and yesterday's news. But he lacks Clinton's positive attributes--policy knowlege, political skill, a hugely enthusiastic base. In fact, to say that McCain often sounds retarded when discussing policy details does a huge disservice to actually mentally challenged people who could surely come up with a more compelling argument than this for the gas tax holiday. I think Obama ought to keep trying to get under McCain's skin, get him even more indignant and angry. Angry people make mistakes, after all, and it's not like there isn't some basis for pusing the anger narrative.
