E.J. Dionne: McCain Doesn't Bring Change, Just More Of The Same.
ST. PAUL -- Once upon a time, John McCain promised to be a different kind of politician and a different kind of Republican. He was about straight talk, reform and nonpartisanship, a resolute foe of the slashing politics of the slaughterhouse.
McCain wants voters to remember that man. But that man has disappeared. His convention, including his running mate Sarah Palin's big speech on Wednesday, dripped of divisive ridicule as speaker after speaker worked to aggravate the country's cultural schisms and replay worn-out lines about weak liberals who are soft on terror.
The Republican crowd here gleefully played into the very worst stereotypes of their party as a privileged class resistant to social change.
When Rudy Giuliani referred to Barack Obama's past as a "community organizer," the crowd broke into ugly, patronizing laughter. These, presumably, are people who never needed a neighborhood advocate. Imagine if Democrats ever reacted to someone who worked as, say, an entrepreneur or a church leader as these Republicans did to Obama's old line of work.
And it's unlikely that even a convention of the American Petroleum Institute would erupt into raucous chants of "Drill, Baby, Drill!"
McCain has not changed this party because he has not even tried. To win the presidential nomination, McCain has pandered to a Republican right wing he once disdained on issue after issue, from oil drilling to immigration to tax cuts for the wealthy.
Just as important, he has decided that his last chance for the presidency rests on a systematic effort to make the old politics of demonization work one more time. No matter how much McCain talks about his desire to transcend Washington's partisan divides, his campaign and his convention will leave behind a bitterness that will turn his promise of a new day into ashes.
His single most cynical act was choosing Palin as his running mate. And "cynical" is precisely the word that his former adviser and friend, the Republican consultant Mike Murphy, used about the pick in an unguarded moment caught by an open microphone.
McCain knows perfectly well that the first requirement in a running mate is preparation to succeed to the presidency. The choices he preferred, by all accounts, included Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge, both of whom could be seen as plausible presidents.
But when it became clear that their support for abortion rights rendered both men politically toxic, McCain veered toward the last-minute pick of Palin. She was someone McCain barely knew, and his campaign misled reporters about the extent to which she had been vetted.
Palin was a quintessentially political choice. She could help McCain bid for the votes of women and appease social conservatives whose views she shares (and who have never been enthusiastic about McCain).
Palin's address here got boffo reviews from many of the very "reporters and commentators" whose good opinion the Alaska governor dismissed as irrelevant. But her speech was as cynical as the decision to put her on the ticket.
She joined in the campaign's fake populism by deriding legitimate concerns about her record, her knowledge and her governing style as the carping of the "political establishment" and the "Washington elite." She ran as the tribune of "small town" Americans by way of suggesting that worries about one person's readiness to be president amounted to an assault on all who hail from localities of modest size. She dared to compare herself to Harry Truman.
She then proceeded to distort Obama's views on taxes, mock his eloquence, and accuse him of wanting "to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world." She also demonstrated how little she respects constitutional rights with this chilling declaration: "Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America; he's worried that someone won't read them their rights."
But these thoughts, of course, were not really Palin's. They were words prepared by the campaign of John McCain, the unifier turned divider.
McCain will certainly try to remind us of the man he once was, to draw on his past as the maverick statesman-politician willing to join his Democratic colleagues in grappling with some of the country's most difficult issues.
It will be a hard sell because McCain has capitulated to the very Washington he so often condemned and is employing the very tactics that were used so ruthlessly and so unfairly against him when he first ran for president eight years ago.
It's possible that the new McCain could claw his way to the White House. It's the old McCain who deserved to be president.
E.J. Dionne is a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group. His e-mail address is postchat@aol.com.
Editor's comment: I hope you did not read the last paragraph too fast and miss its impact.
If you did, go back and read it again.
McCain wants voters to remember that man. But that man has disappeared. His convention, including his running mate Sarah Palin's big speech on Wednesday, dripped of divisive ridicule as speaker after speaker worked to aggravate the country's cultural schisms and replay worn-out lines about weak liberals who are soft on terror.
The Republican crowd here gleefully played into the very worst stereotypes of their party as a privileged class resistant to social change.
When Rudy Giuliani referred to Barack Obama's past as a "community organizer," the crowd broke into ugly, patronizing laughter. These, presumably, are people who never needed a neighborhood advocate. Imagine if Democrats ever reacted to someone who worked as, say, an entrepreneur or a church leader as these Republicans did to Obama's old line of work.
And it's unlikely that even a convention of the American Petroleum Institute would erupt into raucous chants of "Drill, Baby, Drill!"
McCain has not changed this party because he has not even tried. To win the presidential nomination, McCain has pandered to a Republican right wing he once disdained on issue after issue, from oil drilling to immigration to tax cuts for the wealthy.
Just as important, he has decided that his last chance for the presidency rests on a systematic effort to make the old politics of demonization work one more time. No matter how much McCain talks about his desire to transcend Washington's partisan divides, his campaign and his convention will leave behind a bitterness that will turn his promise of a new day into ashes.
His single most cynical act was choosing Palin as his running mate. And "cynical" is precisely the word that his former adviser and friend, the Republican consultant Mike Murphy, used about the pick in an unguarded moment caught by an open microphone.
McCain knows perfectly well that the first requirement in a running mate is preparation to succeed to the presidency. The choices he preferred, by all accounts, included Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge, both of whom could be seen as plausible presidents.
But when it became clear that their support for abortion rights rendered both men politically toxic, McCain veered toward the last-minute pick of Palin. She was someone McCain barely knew, and his campaign misled reporters about the extent to which she had been vetted.
Palin was a quintessentially political choice. She could help McCain bid for the votes of women and appease social conservatives whose views she shares (and who have never been enthusiastic about McCain).
Palin's address here got boffo reviews from many of the very "reporters and commentators" whose good opinion the Alaska governor dismissed as irrelevant. But her speech was as cynical as the decision to put her on the ticket.
She joined in the campaign's fake populism by deriding legitimate concerns about her record, her knowledge and her governing style as the carping of the "political establishment" and the "Washington elite." She ran as the tribune of "small town" Americans by way of suggesting that worries about one person's readiness to be president amounted to an assault on all who hail from localities of modest size. She dared to compare herself to Harry Truman.
She then proceeded to distort Obama's views on taxes, mock his eloquence, and accuse him of wanting "to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world." She also demonstrated how little she respects constitutional rights with this chilling declaration: "Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America; he's worried that someone won't read them their rights."
But these thoughts, of course, were not really Palin's. They were words prepared by the campaign of John McCain, the unifier turned divider.
McCain will certainly try to remind us of the man he once was, to draw on his past as the maverick statesman-politician willing to join his Democratic colleagues in grappling with some of the country's most difficult issues.
It will be a hard sell because McCain has capitulated to the very Washington he so often condemned and is employing the very tactics that were used so ruthlessly and so unfairly against him when he first ran for president eight years ago.
It's possible that the new McCain could claw his way to the White House. It's the old McCain who deserved to be president.
E.J. Dionne is a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group. His e-mail address is postchat@aol.com.
Editor's comment: I hope you did not read the last paragraph too fast and miss its impact.
If you did, go back and read it again.
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