It is time to look at John McCain without the rose colored glasses.  This is a man who was able to get into the US Naval Academy only because his father and grandfather were navy admirals, which caused the academy to give him a free pass for his bad high school grades.  Once at the academy he was only able to rise above 6 others in his class - he was one of the 7 worst students at the academy.  That should have ended his chance to be a naval officer, but a special exception was made for him, allowing him to become a naval aviator.

As a naval aviator he was best known for crashing his aircraft, once because he was too indifferent to read the manual for the aircraft.  On assignment to an aircraft carrier his first brush with fame was to be at the center of a disastrous on-board fire that nearly cost him his life, and did cost the navy billions of dollars in damages.  By then his father was the admiral in charge of all Pacific operations, so the inquiry into the cause of the fire found that McCain was not to blame - just as he was found qualified for the naval academy in the first place in spite of his bad high school record.  Having your daddy in charge of the whole operation can be an advantage.

After he entered combat, flying a ground support aircraft noted for its agility, he managed to get shot down, and was taken as a  prisoner of war.  Much is made of his courage as a POW, but even he admits that if he had known that he wouldn’t be rescued for many years, he wouldn’t have turned down his chance for early release by the North Vietnamese.  His next brush with fame was when he made propaganda films for the North Vietnamese, something that seems to have been forgotten by the news media.  After the war it was time for him to settle down into the obscurity he deserved.

Instead, he began an affair with a woman much younger than his wife, who had been in a bad accident that left her less attractive to John.  He obtained a marriage license to wed his mistress, before even divorcing his current wife.  Clearly the attractiveness of his mistress was enhanced by her hundreds of millions of dollars in personal wealth.

Using his new wife’s wealth he ran for the US Senate in a solidly Republican state, and won easily.  As a senator he began to use his new wife’s wealth to cultivate the press, and finally found something he was good at.  Over the years he became the darling of the press, which was always on the take for parties, good transportation, and other perks that McCain handed out readily.  Thus, his undeserved reputation as a maverick and an independent thinker.  His legislative centerpiece is the McCain Feingold campaign finance law.

Once he began his run for the presidency last year he immediately began to violate his signature law, by unilaterally dropping out of public financing, after using that as collateral for a loan, and finding unexpected success with fund raising.  His “maverick” image went out the door when he selected a campaign staff made up almost exclusively of lobbyists.

Now, as an obvious loser to Obama he picked Palin as his vice presidential candidate in spite of her total lack of qualifications for that office.  And, because he selected her without any form of vetting, he ignored her corrupt past in Alaska.  Republicans, being somewhat  intelligence challenged were so taken by Palin’s looks and ability to speak in complete sentences, that McCain is now poised to win the presidency.

But, winning isn’t at all certain, since McCain has no agenda, beyond more wars and more neo-con nonsense, so Karl Rove’s henchmen are now being allowed by McCain to run a campaign based entirely on lies about Obama.

A good argument can be made that the only thing driving McCain right now is his desire to do something that will make him a success comparable to his daddy and granddaddy.  Not only does he not put America first, he puts only John McCain first, as his whole life demonstrates.

Can there be any doubt that John McCain is morally unfit for any public office?