Warm and Fuzzy Warrior

So, I'm sitting in church Sunday trying to feel the Spirit and avoid a nap.

The preacher is giving a message I don't find particularly relevant to my life, although there are snippets of good information that occasionally pour forth. Then he says something that really gets my attention.

"John McCain is a good man."

Wait, did I just hear my pastor correctly. In a black church, in a black city, did he just say that Old Man Hater is a "good man?"

"Y'all heard me, John McCain is a good man. And I think that good man is coming out right now."

Welcome to the world of the warm and fuzzy warrior.

Before this campaign, Sen. John McCain had a proven image. He was the independent warrior. The man who was beholden to no party and answered to nothing but his own conscience. His morals and courage were forged in a Vietnamese war camp, and they were beyond reproach. This was his media narrative.

Now, much of this narrative wasn't completely accurate, but that didn't matter. When the media creates a template for you, it doesn't have to be accurate. And the media template for McCain cast him as a principled, resolute maverick.

For months, McCain was able to hold on to that "maverick" pose despite doing everything in his power to embrace George Bush and the conservative far right. It didn't matter how many times he flip-flopped or how many extremists he embraced, the media was loathe to change the narrative about John McCain because, frankly, they liked John McCain.

It wasn't until recently when McCain began an all out attack on the media, when he began to tell blatant lies and when he selected an idiot as his running mate that the narrative about McCain started to change. His independence began to be seen as irritability. His aggressiveness became anger. The "maverick" facade was crumbling and McCain was feeling the full power of the media as they attacked him.

Realizing that once he lost the benefit of the doubt his campaign was completely doomed, McCain in recent days has toned down his own personal attacks, while his supporters have ratcheted up their attacks to previously unheard of levels. McCain has even defended Obama from attacks that he previously let slide. And it's working. Now McCain loves the media and the media loves John McCain.

So he hired Barney the purple dinosaur as his media liaison.

When my pastor told us that John McCain was a good man, he was repeating something he'd heard numerous times from news sources. In fact, any comment about McCain's dirty politics was prefaced by a note that he's a good guy, and must have been convinced to do bad things by bad people. Reporters have tripped over themselves to provide McCain with a plausible excuse for his despicable campaign, and even when they finally began to attack him, they were looking for an excuse to embrace him again.

I'm tired of the idiocy. I was raised that a real man walks the walk and talks the talk. Let me put it in Christian terms: "Judge a tree by the fruit it bears."

If a politician is a good man, why would he appeal to the lowest common denominator to win? What does it say about a man that he would be willing to sacrifice his core values to attain a political office? How do you reconcile the idea of an independent maverick with the reality of an old man who can easily be led astray by his campaign aides?

Something doesn't fit here. How many good men would do bad things just to get what they want? How many good men would willingly embrace someone who backstabbed and mistreated them just to fulfill a political ambition? How exactly does that make you a good man?

Let's put an end to the myth that John McCain is a good man.




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