Several bloggers today have said, and I agree: John McCain is a coward. He hides behind his women, Caribou Barbie and the beer heiress, and lets them do his dirty work.
Josh Marshall:
After the first debate many people wondered aloud whether it was hostility and contempt or fear and intimidation that kept McCain from looking Obama in the face even once. But with two weeks and more evidence to consider, it is clear that it was both: Hostility that is magnified by the person's mortifying inability to face the person who inspires it. That's the kind of unchanneled, clogged up anger that makes you unsteady, that makes you make mistakes.
McCain's moral cowardice has been one of the subtexts of this campaign ever since he wound up the nomination and turned his attention to Barack Obama. But I did not realize it would reveal itself in such a physical dimension.
The tell came this week as McCain unearthed the Ayers story which, for whatever its merits, was fully aired months ago and has no clear relation to the particulars of October other than McCain's collapsing poll numbers. He's on it. Palin's on it. He's releasing slashing new TV ads like this one. Both of them are ginning their crowds up into spiraling gyres of right-wing delirium -- a ready-made Lord of the Flies (and let's admit that's a gentle allusion, given the tone of these barnburners) if Obama happened into one of the auditoriums at the wrong moment.
He ever swaggered on for a couple days about how he was going to 'take the gloves off' when he met up with Obama in Nashville. But when the two of them were there in each others physical presence ... nothing. By a myriad of gestures and reactions Obama owned him.
McCain is afraid of the big, bad, black man? WTF? Does he think Obama will kick his ass, live on nationwide television? The POW/war hero/maverick can't say to his face what his women say for him behind Obama's back?
John Cole:
John McCain is not man enough to own his shit. John McCain will not openly confront Obama with his smears and lies and innuendo. John McCain will not come out and talk about Ayers, he has to be asked. That is why he goes to places like Fox News, so he can be asked. What a coincidence.
John McCain is a coward.
John McCain would rather hide behind his wife and Sarah Palin than say it himself.
He would rather produce 2 minute ads that his campaign will never pay to air anywhere, and hope that the tire-swinging media will bring up the topic so he doesn’t have to do it himself.
John McCain just wants to throw shit out there, and “raise questions” about Obama, and hope his supporters connect the dots, because he is too much of a coward to directly push this toxic stew. He would rather hide behind right-wing bloggers, surrogates, and scummy websites staffed with wingnut welfare recipients like the NRO and the Weekly Standard.
John McCain had 90 minutes to bring this stuff up to Obama, to his face, and passed.
John McCain is a coward.
John McCain honorably served his country in the Navy (or maybe not) and was a prisoner of war. He has been in Congress for twenty-six years, representing Arizona first as a congressman, then as senator. His campaign slogan is "country first". Nevertheless, his behavior in these last few weeks before the election--after he famously promised to run a clean, above-board campaign--has been nothing short of reprehensible. McCain's surrogates are walking the fine line between dirty politics and incitement to riot and murder, while McCain himself pretends to have clean hands. Perhaps he thinks that by staying above the fray, he can have his cake and eat it too--he can slander and lie about Obama, and never be accused of saying the words himself.
Joe Biden has it right:
"All of the things they said about Barack Obama in the TV, on the TV, at their rallies, and now on Youtube and everything else," Biden said — referring to McCain and Palin tying Obama to Weatherman bomber Bill Ayers and accusing him of "palling around with terrorists."
"John McCain could not bring himself to look Barack Obama in the eye and say the same things to him," he said to cheers. "In my neighborhood, you got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him."
Dr. Martin Luther King said "the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." As he watchs his vp pick, a totally unqualified, shallow woman, attract the crowds that he himself could not, as he watches his last chance for the presidency slip away to an African-American man whom he considers at best his junior, John McCain must feel some remorse. When the seventy-two-year-old senator from Arizona stops to consider what his legacy will be, should he not win this campaign, McCain must have some regret for the roads not taken. In the midst of economic collapse, two wars abroad, and a lame-duck president from his own party who's managed to be the most unpopular and incompetent president in two generations, McCain could certainly claim that he was forced to make the decisions that he did in order to win the election.
But the path that John McCain did take was one of his own choosing; why else hire the very same people who undid his 2000 bid for the presidency? Why else reneg on his promise earlier this year to run a clean campaign? The fear of losing, of course. And as he did to his fellow POWs while in captivity in Hanoi, as he did to the wife who waited faithfully for him while imprisoned, John McCain took the path of least resistance. For the military veterans who depend on the GI Bill for help in bettering their civilian lives, and for men and women everywhere when he changed his opposition to torture, John McCain took the path of least resistance, the one that offered him the most personal benefit. In his last, desperate flounderings, finally we can take the measure of John Sidney McCain III.
"Country first"? Like hell! And to hell with John McCain. He's a coward, an asshole, and a punk-ass chump.
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