Seventy-one
year old John McCain needs a facelift, really.
Not
because of the barnacles of age that the old Navy war hero wears on his
skin, or because of the scar that snakes down the cheek of his face,
remnants of his battle with skin cancer. No, Old Mac needs a different
kind of cosmetic surgery, the kind to rid himself of the plastic
personas that make up his image these days.
He is a
man who has been in the public eye for what seems like an eternity and
he has amassed an eternity’s worth of identities. They call him “The
Maverick” except these days that would equivocate to saying that Marilyn
Monroe was a true blonde. What was the last thing that the Mac did that
would in anyway identify him with the moniker “maverick”?
Another
image is his Straight Talking public persona. Mac does talk straight. He
talks straight to the Christian Right whose votes he courts. He talks
straight to the Catholics, whose votes he needs. He talks straight to
all those devastated women called Clintonites. It’s just that what he
talks straight to one, he may not talk straight to the other. These days
Macs’ brand is more a wink and nod identity. Maybe what he needs is an
eyelift.
Mac has
done some good things as a dedicated public servant. Surely his military
career and his five and a half years as a POW make him a hero. He worked
tirelessly for campaign finance reform, which was passed as The
McCain-Feingold Act in 2002. He never gave up on his effort to heal the
wounds of the Vietnam War, and was responsible for the restoration of
diplomatic relations with America’s onetime nemesis.
Mac has
had his troubles along the way. An early failed marriage made for a
tempestuous personal life. The McCain-Feingold Act was his attempt to
restore his tarnished reputation the result of his having found himself
embroiled in what has become known as The Keating Five Scandal, when he
was one of five United States Senators said to have received legal
political contributions from Charles Keating Jr. and his associates at
Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, but then was contacted by Mr.
Keating to help save his institution from ruin. Mac was never found
guilty of impropriety but was reprimanded by the senate Ethics Committee
for exercising "poor judgment.”
He ran
for President against George W. Bush, and lost a miserable battle in a
particularly contentious fight to W. For political expedience, Mac and
Tush made up. One of the images it would serve Mac to deconstruct is the
one of him hugging the President as he embraced him for his run for his
second term. The hug, a deal with the devil, was the moment he got his
party to stand behind him for this current run for the presidency. But
never was there such a smarmy deal with the devil embraced so publicly.
Now,
John McCain is the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee. He continues
to support the Iraq War insisting it should be fought to a successful
conclusion. He has changed his opinion on the Bush tax cuts: he used to
be against them now he is for them, although he would eliminate the
Alternative Minimum Tax to assist the financially strapped middle-class.
He wants to reduce the corporate tax rate, pledges to eliminate
pork-barrel spending, freeze nondefense discretionary spending for at
least a year, and reduce Medicare growth. He calls himself a
conservationist.
Much
has been written about McCain’s temper. His friends call his rages
“passionate conviction.” His enemies are less poetic. He is accused of
having foot-and-mouth disease because of his sometimes ill-considered
remarks. Impatience and at best an odd sense of humor are said to be
part of his personality.
And
that’s Mac: Navy War Hero, maverick, straight shooter, panderer,
reformer, heartbreaker, father, political operative, conservative,
independent, smarmy deal maker, ethically challenged, impatient,
passionate, a caring sort of a man of a thousand faces when really just
one would do -- the face of sincerity.