The Incredible, Shrinking John McCain

It really amazes me how the image of John McCain has changed over the course of this campaign. Coming into this year, McCain's image could be summed up in three phrases: "Maverick", "War Hero", and "Straight Talk". Now, with Election Day less than a month away, we see a very different John McCain. The McCain of October, 2008, seems a far cry from the McCain of last January. Now, the words swirling around McCain are much different: "Bitter", "Nasty", and "Desperate".

This comes as the McCain campaign has seen major setbacks in a vast number of polls since last week. With the continuing economic meltdown and Sarah Palin's less-than-stellar debate performance, things seem to be moving away from McCain. Pollster.com shows several swing states moving into Obama's column: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, and even Florida now are blue on the trend maps.

Now, the same advisers who told McCain that the way to seem presidential was to pretend to suspend your campaign and to cry "foul" when Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin such mind-benders as "What magazines do you read?" have now decided that the only way they can win is by going all-out negative against Senator Obama and "turning the page" on the economy. As Daily Kos reported yesterday:

Sen. John McCain and his Republican allies are readying a newly aggressive assault on Sen. Barack Obama's character, believing that to win in November they must shift the conversation back to questions about the Democrat's judgment, honesty and personal associations, several top Republicans said.

Looks like the Straight Talk Express is about to go mud-boggin'! What I find most baffling about this is the risk involved. OK, so we talk about Obama's (at best) casual acquaintence Bill Ayers. What about John McCain's old pal and bribe source Charles Keating (remember the "Keating Five" anyone? You know they're also planning on resurrecting Reverend Wright. I really hope they do that. That way, we can talk about the questionable cast of characters that make up the spiritual wing of Team McCain/Palin. We have McCain supporter Pastor Hagee, a notorious anti-Semite who is an equal-opportunity bigot. Hagee also spews hate for Catholics to a ludicrous degree. Hagee has compared the pope to the anti-christ and has stated that Hitler did what he did because he was educated at a Catholic school. You cannot make this stuff up!!!! The Columbia Journalism Review ran a great piece on McCain's favorite spiritual bigot.

And it's not only Senator McCain with some shady spiritual counsel. it turns out that the evangelist who Sarah Palin freuquently praises and gives credit to for her success is truly a dying breed. Pastor Thomas Muthee is an actual witch-hunter. Now, I'm not talking about witch-hunts as in Joe McCarthy bellowing about Communists in government. I'm talking about a man who goes around looking for actual witches. We may have even uncovered footage of Pastor Muthee hard at work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g

In alls seriousness, what does it say about the mindset of any candidate for national office whose own spiritual adviser believes in witches? This is America 2008, not Salem in the 1690's. Here is a real clip of Plain and her buddy Muthee courtesy of Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwkb9_zB2Pg
Nice to see a pastor asking Jesus to fund her campaigns, huh?

In short, McCain has shrunk over the course of this campaign. From the man who pledged early on to wage a clean, issues-oriented campaign, he has shrunk into a nasty, bitter man who thinks that personal destruction is a good alternative to talking about the issues that the vast majority of American's care about. John McCain and Sarah Palin on the campaign trail are no better than a pair of dung-hurling Howler monkeys. At a time where America is facing economic meltdown at home and an endless war abroad, we should expect a higher standard from our candidates.