Thanks, But No Thanks

2008-09-22
By Goldie Taylor

There was a time when I truly admired Senator John McCain.  I am a former U.S. Marine, so when he talked about duty to country I was listening.  I was listening when he led the Gang of Fourteen, a bi-partisan effort intended to thwart filibusters and confirm qualified, thoughtful jurists to the Supreme Court.  I was listening when he stood toe to toe with George Bush, Karl Rove and their band of merry men in South Carolina as they smeared him with vicious lies not worth repeating. I was listening when he called Bush’s wartime tax cuts for the wealthy “immoral”, wrote an innovative climate change bill and authored another on immigration.  I was listening when he called us to our higher selves, public service for the sake of the greater good. Following his loss to President Bush in the 2000 South Carolina primary, he did the unthinkable.  He announced publicly that he’d lied about his position on the Confederate flag. “I broke my promise to always tell the truth,” he said at the time.  He had me at “hello.”

I don’t recognize the new John McCain.  The man I respected was a breath of fresh air—a man of unwavering candor.  He wasn’t a politician. He was a true statesman.  He told the truth when it wasn’t convenient and literally balled up his fist and struck a blow to the status quo.  But the man, who once wore his integrity as a badge of honor, has now sullied it with distortions, half-truths, misleading statements and flat-out, bald-faced lies.  All in the name of winning. And make no mistake, when you repeat the same lie over and over again that makes you a liar. Do it when the truth has been shown to you and that makes you a pathological liar in need of medication.

Rather than run his own his ideas and values, McCain has instead abandoned them altogether.  Those tax cuts? Now they are the best thing since they lit up the baseball park and started playing at night. Climate change? Immigration? He won’t even support the very legislation he wrote.  George Bush?  Voted with him 95 percent of the time. Karl Rove?  He didn’t just rip a page out of his playbook. He stole the book and the sequels.  Rather than bank on his once vaunted integrity, McCain and his running mate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin have wrapped themselves in victimhood while throwing firebombs at Senator Barack Obama. 

They say politics ain’t beanbag, but McCain has become the very kind of vile, unrepentant politician he told us so often he despised.  And it’s a work of fiction. 

All of it.

He could take the easy way out and blame his campaign.  But it’s his voice on my TV screen saying, “I’m John McCain and I approve this message.” It’s John McCain on the morning shows, angrily attacking his questioners, as time and time again he is called on the carpet for the stream of whoppers he’s told lately.  Cindy McCain was right. The ladies of The View picked them bare.  They forgot that Barbara Walters is a real journalist.  So let’s roll the tape.

Obama will raise your taxes.  Lie.  His tax cuts will reach 80 percent of Americans. Who does he leave out?  The same people who brought you exorbitant gas prices and the mortgage meltdown.

Obama wanted to teach sex education to kindergartners.  Lie.  The legislation called for age appropriate sex education, including a curriculum that would teach five year olds how to spot sexual predators.

One by one, McCain has been called on to condemn the lies and what did he do?  He doubled down quicker than a seasoned Vegas blackjack player.  To the contrary, he’s mounted a high horse on a low road. Look at me!  I’m a POW. 

McCain once railed against the intolerance of the Christian Right.  The very people he has now pandered to in order to win his selection of Palin. This is nothing short of “personal treason” as one columnist for the Washington Post so aptly put it. As evidenced by her performance in an interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson, she is patently unprepared to run anything bigger than the local Piggly Wiggly. 
 
The McCain I once respected and admired is long gone.  This McCain -- the one who wouldn’t know the truth if it jumped up and bit him in the face -- is categorically unfit to lead. 
 
So, on this one, John McCain, thanks, but no thanks.  If I want a Whopper, I’ll stop by Burger King.

For more information, visit www.goldietaylor.net  or her blog Second Day at www.goldietaylor.wordpress.com.