A Slight Delay

Got an interesting email yesterday from Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager. I should note that it wasn’t to me, as such; it’s not like I have connections, I just signed up for the McCain mailing list on the candidate’s website. Anyway, Davis says of Barack Obama:

Sadly, Senator Obama’s actions are just more politics as usual. I don’t know who should be more disappointed - the supporters whose faith in Senator Obama has already been betrayed, or the people who Senator Obama now expects to believe his new sales pitch. Either way, one thing is clear - Senator Obama has shown that he is just another politician.

And who’s calling the kettle black?

This isn’t to say that Obama is some new breed of politician; we turn those out with such alarming regularity that they’ve lost their irregularity (what would be truly new would be a politician playing the game and admitting it). What Davis’s statement smacks of is a man crying sour grapes, having been beaten at his own game. In a country with the collective attention span of a fruit fly, it’s easy to forget sometimes that much of Obama’s appeal derives from many of the same things that had people taking a serious look at McCain in 2000: what was, or at least appeared to have been, a willingness to buck the party regulars, to take unpopular stands, and to propose (believably, for a change) that government didn’t have to be an albatross around the necks of those it proposed to govern. Yes, I’m aware that there are some deep ideological and practical divisions between the two men; that said, I’d still argue that there are also some deep similarities between them.

And while we’re talking about “just another politician,” let’s take a look at John McCain. The new 2008 John McCain, with all sorts of features added over the last eight years. That peskily principled stance on the environment has been ditched in favor of expanded drilling that–by Conservative economists’ estimates–will have little economic impact, and that little bit will only come years from now. He’s flip-flopped on “agents of intolerance,” welcoming the likes of Hagee, Parsley, and Falwell into the fold. The New Republic, Balkinization, Crooks And Liars and Carpetbagger Report all list several more reversals of position, so I won’t list every last one of them here. To be fair, at least he’s consistent on abortion; he’s still against it, having already reversed his position in time for the primaries in 2000. (more…)