6th
McFaust and the high cost of character
The irony of the McCain campaign is that the John McCain of 2000, of the original Straight Talk Express, would despise the craven, dishonorable campaigner using his name in 2008. Somewhere during the Bush Administration, McCain decided that he would latch himself to the President’s coattails, and ride them into the White House, this time with conservative approval. The price tag of this Faustian bargain was a complete repudiation of his political integrity - running a fiercely negative and acrimonious campaign, engaging in daily doublespeak and doubletalk, and appointing an unqualified understudy to excite his apathetic conservative wing. The legacy of a McCain administration may be to make the Bush administration look classy, cerebral, and character driven in comparison.
