I wonder if he remembers giving this speech? And I wonder if he feels dishonored in the dark when he thinks about how he is running his campaign? Perhaps a good question for some brave reporter to ask him...

People can have shining, honourable moments, even be reasonably good people, and then.... rot. It's that simple. Yeats & the poets, the Bible, the Greeks - they all wrote about this. we all know people like this.

And for me, there is just no way to apply the word honourable to the way he treated his first wife, to his decades-long series of decisions to bow to the great God Mammon, to his incessant war-mongering & the lives it has already cost, and especially, to the way he bowed & kissed the ring of people he KNEW, from his own lived experience, were complete shits - if not evil.

McCain has that rot. And there's not much of the original man left.

I'll be honest there was a time I thought a great deal of John McCain. Of all the republicns running in 2000 for the nomination, I thought he was the best and I thought if we lost I could probably live with him. I truly think something has happened to him in the ensuing eight years. It could be age or just the fact that he knows this is is last shot and he'll do anything to get elected. I thought I would never hear him falling back on his POW status for every mis step. And maybe I didn't realize back in 2000 he shoots from the hip and doesn't think first.

I'm sorry to see the McCain I thought I knew become something that doesn't resemble that person.

Rec'd, because it's interesting -- and because I admire your effort to see both sides of a question at once.

I don't 100% agree, but I do agree about your basic point. McCain does have ideals that he seems to be serious about, which puts him way ahead of a lot of Republican pols. And I agree with you that it doesn't do any harm for us to remember that.

But I have to say, first, that the ideals themselves seem flawed to me. "Honor" is a lovely old-fashioned word, but it's also a word that has a long history of justifying anger, self-regard, inflexibility, and violence.

I'm more inclined to trust people who talk about reason, justice, equality, and community.

Secondly, there's this: McCain may be a better man than Bush, but I'm not convinced that he'd be a better president. His behavior during the Georgia crisis was not at all reassuring. Sometimes passionate, sincere people are actually more dangerous than cynical hypocrites.

Maybe it's the two Americas deal. McCain is faithful to an America that for most of us doesn't exist. As for the attacks on Feingold that got worked into the thread, they were inevitable after his mauling of Obama over FISA I guess.

Good post as usual, Lux. If only deeds matched words...

A few days ago, I found myself in a situation where someone who had done great wrong to me - more than once - needed my help. He needed to go to the hospital, because he had a nasty gash opened over his right eye (obtained while doing wrong unto someone else).

I took him to the emergency room, waited the obligatory four hours for him to be seen and treated, and took him home. The whole time, I don't think I said 20 words to him. I was angry at myself for helping someone who had treated me so badly, but I don't think I could have lived with myself if I hadn't helped him. You know...Matthew 18:21-23 and all that rot.

The nature of the wrongs referenced above is immaterial. The point is, the 2003 version of me would have left him bleeding on the curbside where I saw him. The 1998 version of me might have walked over and kicked him in the wound before leaving him.

The reasons for me helping this person are also immaterial. The thing is that character can - and does - change. I think that's the triumph and the tragedy of the human condition.

John McCain's central character changed at some point. Yes, he cheated on his wife, but relationships are complicated enough - even if you don't throw in horrible injuries suffered by both John and Carol McCain.

Honestly, I still think he had core principles and decency. In fact, though I supported Gore in 2000, I would not have minded if John McCain were president. Where I truly believe McCain lost his way was after the 2000 Republican primary, where he endured a series of February Bush/Rove smears that knocked him out of contention. After that, he got on board with the GOP train more and more with each passing year.

McCain's single overriding ambition since that primary has been to get his one final crack at the Presidency. For this, he has sold his maverick status down the river. The McCain you see in the commencement address Lux Umbra Dei links to no longer exists. That character has been erased by ambition and political expedience.

And, to be honest, I think that it galls McCain on some level to be running the campaign he is, to not be able to be his free-wheeling self on the trail. I think McCain's fully aware that the 2000 McCain would never endorse the 2008 McCain. And, in a way, I feel sorry for him, because his ambition, plus the brutal experience with the GOP smear factory, wiped away his last vestiges of independent thinking.

But none of this allows McCain a pass for his change in character. In the end, that change in character will shine through, and it's what I think will ultimately lead him to defeat. The image I see is John McCain, sitting at his Senate desk in mid-January, pondering what happened to the actual maverick he once was - and what might have been if he had dared to be that maverick during this election.

seeing the McCain that McCain himself wants to be

I understood you didn't want your post to be about the political race.

But the irony is, I think it is crucial to understand in this way in order to play the political horse race game successfully, it's what the pros do. A lot of crap that blogger amateurs are pushing now attempting to label McCain is inaccurate and is just not going to ring true with people who are undecided, if McCain can manage to get his real self across. (And I will admit that that IF is in question, given his often poor campaign performances.) Hyperbole only works if it has a slice of reality in it. You've got to know the product well if you're going to attack it successfully, it's got to ring true to people.

Obama is also in an unusual situation that would make certain types of attacks that might work in another race backfire: hurting McCain's rep isn't at all the main thing he needs to do to win; winning the election is still all about Obama because he is the one whose past life story and image is less known to the public, particularly the public that is in play in order to win, and because of the "throw out the bums" zeitgeist this time. It may be true that he needs to show fighting passion against McCain, but that's because he needs to show fighting passion. Attacking McCain in a way that ends up looking inaccurate will hurt Obama, not help--he is in danger of labeling himself like he doesn't have wisdom if he pegs McCain like he doesn't appear in debates and future campaign performances.

Personally, putting my own amateur spinmeister hat on for a minute, I like the pity angle, i.e., poor John McCain, you used to be such a great guy, what the hell happened to you? But then I'm no seasoned campaign operative.

We'll all know better what images both candidates are going for once the conventions are over. In particular, what the GOP does to remove McCain from George Bush's side is going to be interesting and will give the pros something to work with. Whoever McCain presents as at the convention, he can't easily go back on or finesse in debates.

It is a fortuitously good match! I used to memorize latin phrases so as to sound more intelligent than I really was; nowadays with my memory growing ever more unreliable and forgetting my way to the grocery store once, still those old phrases pop up.

Two more I like that you might enjoy also:

Nihil magnum, nisi bonum: "nothing is great that is not good"

Ne vile fano: "bring nothing base to the shrine"

Americans have this peculiar fancy that we arrived on the scene fully formed, ex nihilo, or that all things began 10 or 30 years ago.

Latin just reminds me of the tremendous and awesome tradition we are part of. Duns Scotus, Thomas Aquinas, Tertullian, Erasmus!, Voltaire, Kant, and all the legions of bright spirits that have gone before, their blood flows through us and shapes us. We are their amnesiac children.

Well 24 hours has gone by so this thread should be closing down soon.

Closing with this.

"Much have I admired, nothing have I despised"