John McCain's tantrum in Albuquerque
John McCain threw a temper tantrum in Albuquerque today, asking who was the real Barack Obama. But one has to wonder who the real John McCain is. Was he the war hero that he portrayed himself as? Or was he the reckless aviator who would take all sorts of unnecessary risks as he crashed five times? Is he the corrupt Senator who was involved with the Keating Five during a similar time during our nation's history? Or is he the maverick who accepted responsibility for that fiasco? Or is he the person who recently denied such responsibility?
Is John McCain the maverick of 2000 who took on the Republican establishment and who called Falwell and other members of the religious right out on their hypocrisy? Or is he the whipped puppy who bows and scrapes at the feet of Emperor Dobson? Is he the maverick of 2000 who was so embittered at George Bush that he openly considered breaking with the Republican Party? Is he the person who is so willing to work across party lines that he considered being John Kerry's Vice-President? Or is he the person who sold every last remnant of his soul on the altar of ambition?
Another case in point: Is he the person who would have appointed moderate judges who would have upheld Roe? Or does he support right-wing judicial activism that would gut Roe and Brown and Griswold and every other civil liberty that is currently, even in this day of right-wing judicial activism, still the law of the land? Is he the person who constantly criticized George Bush for his mismanagement of Iraq? Or is he the person who claims that we should stay there for the next 100 years even as his own President thinks we should leave?
The problem is, nobody knows who the real John McCain is. Nobody knows if he has the health to serve out four or eight years as our next President of the United States. And nobody knows if the lady who would be one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the Presidency is qualified or not. John McCain won't say. John McCain has so assiduously pushed his maverick image for all these years that he is now in a prison of his own making -- nobody knows who the real John McCain is.