MCCAIN AT THE GATES OF HELL

After watching John McCain at the Republican debates recently, I couldn't help but notice how awkward, detached, and forced he seemed. Once the Republican front runner, McCain's poor fund raising, his excessive age, and questionable public comments have seriously undermined his bid to be the GOP's Reganesque savior. One can't help but wonder how much McCain really wants to win. By turns sober and winsome, McCain never seems to evince the right emotion at the right time. He was nervous and out of breath at the beginning of the debates which did little to dispel the notion that he's too old to be president. But moreover, his shortness of breath speaks to his overall comfort level with himself. He's a seasoned politician who's already been through one presidential campaign. Where is the self-assuredness of a man who's navigated the harrowing gauntlet of going up against no less than Karl Rove? Whither McCain's even hand and steady leadership in the face of a minor primary debate when the stakes couldn't be less important--at least in terms of what's to come?

A single moment in the debate may provide some illumniation on what appears to be McCain's self-destruction. Notice in the video clip how he begins by light-heartedly (and superciliously) demeaning Tancredo, after which he launches into a seemingly innapropriate and ill timed rant about hunting down Osama bin Ladin to the 'gates of hell'. Forget, for a moment, the tonal incongruity of making a joke and then seguewaying into a discussion of murdering terrorists. What's so interesting about this isn't so much the forced change of tone, but rather McCain's reaction to it. He seems chagrinned and embarrassed at his own insincerity, as if wakened from a dream. There is a moment of clarity in his eyes, and in the sorrowful smile that follows the realization that his plastic words ring hollow. After all, this is a man who once stood up for his values regardless of how his own party reacted. His campaign finance battles were noble and politcally risky, yet he proved himself a man of integrity who stood up for what he believed. But now, after aligning himself with the same Bush administration that smeared him in South Carolina in 2000 by suggesting he had an illegitimate (and black) child, and which also outrageously implied that he was mentally unstable because of his time spent in a Vietnamese prison camp, by forcing himself to 'make nice' with Bob Jones university, by compromising some of his core beliefs in order to appeal to his conservative base, I think McCain has lost his soul. And I think he knows it. His subsequent strategic and rhetorical gaffes in the campaign symbolize what has become clear to nearly everyone except, until now, McCain: he's lost his way and doesn't believe in himself anymore. It remains to be seen whether or not he can rediscover the man who built up such a wealth of bi-partisan political capital and rebuild what was once an unimpeachable character.