RIP John McCain's lost integrity

[babylonsister]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/20/92434/commentary-rip-john-mccains-lost.html

Commentary: RIP John McCain's lost integrity

By Leonard Pitts Jr. | The Miami Herald


We are gathered here today to pay our final respects to John McCain's integrity.

snip//

Two things here: One, all the nattering about flip-flops aside, there is nothing wrong with changing one's opinion. It indicates a thinking mind.

Two, McCain is hardly unique. Indeed, they have a name for people who change their opinions in order to win votes: politicians.

But these are not just changes of opinion we're talking about. Rather, they are betrayals of core principle. And while that might be politics as usual, there is a higher standard for the politician who has positioned himself as a man of uncommon integrity, a purveyor of straight talk in a nation hungry for same. When that man panders, the disappointment is keen.

So it stings to see McCain knuckle under to the ideological rigidity that makes it heresy to cross the aisle, question the orthodoxy or have an independent thought. There's a sense of loss for those who ask of leaders, leadership. It reinforces the cynical notion that there is no one out there who is authentic.

One is reminded of that poignant scene in The Truman Show where Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank has just discovered his entire life was a made-for-TV fiction. "Was nothing real?" he asks. A voter who believed in John McCain, who regarded his iconoclastic singularity as a stirring example, might be forgiven for asking the very same thing.

"I never considered myself a maverick?!" Wow.

With those words, McCain completes his transmutation into an avatar of all that is wrong in American politics.

May his integrity rest in peace.

[AndyA]

1. Any integrity John McCain may or may not have had is likely overrated.

Anyone who would choose Sarah Palin as a running mate, or allow someone to choose her for him, is weak and likely has little integrity to start with. Whatever McCain may have had going for him prior to the announcement of Palin as his running mate, he lost at that point.

What. A. Joke.

McCain deserves to be voted out of office. His judgement is obviously impaired. Your time is up, McCain. NEXT!

[polichick]

2. +1

[beac]

3. What integrity? He's NEVER had any, but he made a great career for himself PRETENDING to have some.

Ever since his Naval Academy days, he's been a hothead and a screw up. If his last name wasn't McCain, he'd have been booted from the Academy and never had the chance to wreck five planes. And as far as that nonsense about him refusing early release from the Hanoi Hilton, he knew DAMN WELL that his father would disown him and he'd be a national disgrace if he did. He was more afraid of Daddy than the VC. So he endured what hundreds of other guys did and has been dining out on it ever since.


John McCain's "integrity" died in childhood-- if he ever had any at all.

[liberal N proud]

4. What integrity?

[Orsino]

5. I think he used that up in Vietnam.

Haven't seen a sign of it since, have we?

[Lerkfish]

11. what integrity?

he was a POW. There are rumors he completely told the viet cong whatever they needed to know -- not that I blame him for that, btw, he was badly injured and not in a good position to withstand torture -- but because of whose son he was, there was a coverup of that fact and the whitewash to make him seem a hero.

I don't know if that rumor is true... but based on everything I've seen him do since, it carries a lot of plausibility in my mind.

[Orsino]

12. Used up in Vietnam, indeed. n/t

[CBGLuthier]

6. The Man who was never there.

A funeral for an imaginary thing. He has never had a shred of integrity. Never. Not one day in his waste of a life.

[Swamp Rat]

7. I agree

Btw, though I play a 6-string, I dig cigar box guitars. :hi:

[KG]

8. right up there with the colin powell integrity mythology. pure fantasy.

[spanone]

9. he lost any shred when he foisted the moosemom on america

[Lerkfish]

10. you cant mourn what was never alive.

the false meme of his integrity was simply that.