Thanks, but no thanks

Politicians are like used car salesmen:  we expect them to lie. 

“It’s in mint condition,” he tells you with a straight face.  “Get in. See how it feels on you.”

Sure, it takes a while for the cool air to start blowing but you don’t notice, because the salesman has rolled down the windows and opened the sunroof to let you “feel” the experience. And boy, does it feel good.  “Let’s put it on the highway and open it up!” he goads.  Before you know it, you’re sitting with the finance manager working out a “deal.” 

She’s a nice lady, you tell yourself, as you sign up for the extended warranty, credit life insurance, and roadside assistance (which you’ll undoubtedly need).  She hasn’t told you about the 3 percentage points she earning on the loan, but heck, she sure is a nice lady.

Unfortunately, we have come to expect political candidates to parse the facts in their own favor.  We expect them to flip-flop on the issues, pander to our most closely held ideals, and craft charades so beautifully choreographed we would think we were watching Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake at the American Ballet Theatre. We get caught up in the bright marquee lights, lavish costumes, the spectacular sets, and the wonderfully complicated composition.   They recite the ABCs and we swoon and swear they are quoting Shakespeare.

They invite us to “kick the tires” but then count on us not to look under the hood.  Many of us wouldn’t know what we were looking for anyway.  When we ask questions, invariably they remind us that we don’t know the intricacies of fine machinery or how things get done in Washington.  They remind us about their “experience” and spin wild tales meant to convince us that they are really just like us.

We buy into the production, because we want to believe them.

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 publically 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 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 on his own 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 own 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. Shall we?

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.

Palin said “thanks, but no thanks” to the so-called Bridge to Nowhere.  Lie.  What she really said was please, pretty please, we didn’t need an old stupid bridge anyway and by the way, I’ll keep the money. 

Palin never requested earmarks as governor.  Well, yes she did. $256 million for 2007 and $197 million for 2008.  In fact, Alaska has consistently been the largest per capita beneficiary of federal earmarks.  She even hired a lobbyist for tiny Wasilla to bring in a mother load.  “It’s un-American, it’s undemocratic, and it’s not going to be accepted in a McCain-Palin administration. Earmark abuse will stop,” she said.  Presumably, that’s true because if they win she won’t be in a position to request any more money.

Palin, according to assorted statements, either fired or didn’t fire the head of the Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan. And according to Palin, his dismissal (or non-dismissal) had nothing to do with her former brother-in-law’s nasty divorce from her sister. That’s hard to believe when she won’t sit before the bi-partisan investigative panel that she asked for.   It’s a tough line to swallow, when the Alaska attorney general (and Palin appointee) refuses to allow government employees to testify.  Even though he is technically the lawyer for the state, not Palin. It’s even harder to believe when a gaggle of McCain lawyers took an express flight to Juneau to squash the investigation altogether.  One usually has to wait until they are actually elected to start obstructing investigations.  Even Cheney held out that long.

Did I mention lawyers are a lot like car salesmen too? 

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. 

Bush Doctrine?  Never heard of it, but what’s your point Chaaaarrlie? Alaska’s energy production numbers?  Grossly exaggerated.  Banning books?  Never dreamed of it.  But I did fire the librarian when she didn’t answer my “rhetorical” questions (three times) the way I wanted her to.  Foreign relations? I can see Russia from my house!  Met any heads of state?  No, and you wouldn’t be asking me if I was a man.  Actually, what she said was that there were other candidates for vice president who had not met foreign leaders.  While she was busy cruising the aisles for books to ban, she should’ve checked out a few on U.S. History.

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.  His failure to appropriately vet Palin is just one example.

That one-owner certified, pre-owned baby parked on the showroom floor and all dolled up with colorful flags?  Turns out, that “one owner” was your local rent-a-wreck.  Raise the hood and you discover a re-built engine and tell-tale evidence of a paint job meant to disguise a previous collision. The body is fire engine red now, but it was once metallic blue.  Oh, and the odometer has been rolled back with a twisted metal clothes hanger. 

Thanks, but no thanks.  If I want a Whopper, I’ll stop by Burger King.