For many Americans Colin Powell's trip to the UN solidified their
support for the Iraq war. I needed no such reassurance. John McCain
supported the war and so I felt comfortable and confident. In 2002, it
seemed unimaginable that John McCain would follow President Bush
blindly. Those of us who campaigned for McCain in 2000 fought on the
front lines of the first battle to stop the Bush regime.

I
don't want to get into the details of the decision to support the war:
the influence of September 11th and politics, the capitulation of
Democratic critics, or the silencing of dissent by the media. I was a
victim of and accomplice to all of that.

What I do want to
talk about is the tragedy of post-2000 John McCain. This is not to say
that the reality of pre-2000 McCain is as impressive or positive as I
felt it was when I supported him, but instead to show how cold
heartedly and cynically he betrayed those who eight years ago looked to
him for leadership.

What many don't remember is that John
McCain was actually the first person to fight against what has become
the Bush Machine. Many, if not all, of us in that campaign understood
exactly how horrible a president Bush would be, although, to be honest,
we couldn't have known the true magnitude. But his lack of imagination
and downright stupidity were obvious to us from the start.

The
McCain 2000 campaign felt like a political insurgency against a new
despot in our party (at the time, needless to say, I was a Republican).
Bush was riding to power on the wings of the extremists whose influence
most of us McCain folk were working to throw out of not just our party,
but the entire political debate. His "agents of intolerance" line was
one of the proudest moments of the process, for me at least. His
campaign was fun, inspiring, fulfilling, and the most demoralizing
experience I have had in politics...until I watched as McCain
transformed over the ensuing years into that exact type of politician
we had worked so hard against.

By 2002, the irony of McCain's
"maverick" title was not apparent to me, especially as he fulfilled a
seven year commitment to reform campaign finance laws with
McCain-Feingold. Just before the war in 2003, I felt completely
confident that McCain was not parroting administration talking points
when he said: "There's no doubt in my mind that we will prevail and
there's no doubt in my mind, once these people are gone, that we will
be welcomed as liberators" (Hardball, March 24, 2003).

It was
at this time, just preceding the Iraq war, really that McCain's
transformation truly started. Perhaps to a man who had been in the
Senate as long as he, the 2008 election no longer seemed that far away;
or perhaps he, like many (and at times myself), was so spooked by the
September 11th attacks that he turned blindly away from all that he
knew and had learned about foreign policy in favor of the comfort of
unthinkingly following a leader not up to the task.

Regardless,
it was at this point that he began to lie to the American people and
begin a six year campaign to deceive and distract the American people
in order to maintain the small hope of achieving his long held dream of
becoming president. Supporting the president during the 2004 campaign,
McCain sounded nothing like the man whose inspiring and ultimately
futile surge in New Hampshire in 2000 had almost transformed the
Republican party.

Unbelievably, the history of McCain's
capitulation and betrayal is clear on virtually every issue of
importance over the past eight years. He has surrendered to the
Republican party line, either out of political convenience or
ignorance, on the Iraq War, relations with Iran, US torture policy, tax
policy, judicial independence, selling out to oil companies, covering
up administration lies and law breaking, and, of course, his "greatest
legislative achievement," campaign finance.

I cannot put in
words how thankful I am that the Democratic Party has finally nominated
a man who I am willing to follow, though better informed by my past
mistakes, and who, also unbelievably, has the right position on every
single one of these issues, FISA notwithstanding (let's just not get
into that discussion here). Senator Obama's presidential campaign
pulled me out of the political confusion and darkness of being betrayed
by the last leader who I believed in.