Hey boy you can't go where the others go

So many on the left are feigning their incredible disappointment with John McCain and his relentless fight against the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell based on ever-changing, increasingly tenuous and hypocritical rationales. And they're right on one key point: it's vile, disgusting and tragic. He's decided that his legacy will be standing on the wrong side of history, standing on the wrong side of justice, standing for an institutionalized anachronism of simple-minded prejudice. He's too foolish (or too bitter) to be embarrassed, too foolish (or too bitter) to recognize that he will be written into history as a leading voice of a dying breed of bigots. And he's too foolish to realize that he will deserve every bit of derision that this particular display earns for him.

Unfortunately, however, I cannot say I am surprised. I cannot read what is in someone's hear, but it seems to me that this is the same John McCain that has always been there, front and center, if people would just pay attention. I wasn't shy about my view of John McCain during the year leading up to the presidential election. Notwithstanding the media branding of John McCain's maverickiness, propped by the insistence that his POW years made criticism of McCain beyond the pale, John McCain has rarely shown himself as a moderate, or honest, or a man of principle, except where it suits him. He's always been defined mostly by what is good for John McCain. In the past, what was good for John McCain appeared to be his media glorification - the moderate, the hero, the maverick, the darling. That maverick-ness came not from doing what was right, but doing what would garner McCain the most admiration, from the populace but mostly from the media. That was his path to the presidency, where he envisioned the source of his greatest worship. It wasn't about making right choices or personal conviction; it was all about what was good for the promotion of John McCain. And remember, as TNC points out, that this is the same man who opposed the MLK holiday. Now he's decided that what is good for John McCain is to be the face of the anti-Obama right, because he can no longer see beyond his anger. His quest for the Presidency finally dead, he no longer owes anything to the media, no longer is focused on the long game of setting himself up to be king. His goal now is to destroy the man who broke all his dreams, and he's pursuing that goal with all the vigor that he once pursued the Presidency.

Moreover - heaven forbid I should say this about a veteran and "hero" - he isn't particularly knowledgable about or shown true leadership regarding matters of the military. In his view, leadership means not bearing responsibility, not taking a stand to do what is right and to encourage others to do the same. He claims that leadership means listening to your subordinates, ignoring the fact that the military leadership has been listening. He then conflates listening (but only to those voices he wants to hear) with following, turning the chain of command on its head. He ducks behind bigotry, and claims that it's a principled stand.

What McCain calls "leadership" looks a lot like cowardice. It's plain, old-fashioned fear.

McCain pretends to back the troops, yet turns his back on so many of them. He claims that "wartime" - that endless state we find ourselves in because of George Bush and Dick Cheney and John McCain - is the wrong time to make a change. Apparently, however, it is the right time to focus not on "war," or on hunting down Osama bin Laden, but instead on spending valuable resources and energy hunting down and kicking out men and women dedicated to serving and defending their country simply on the basis of whom they love or desire, or forcing them to lie about the fundamental truth of who they are. For what values, what freedoms, does he think those soldiers are fighting?

Be disappointed, if you must. But I'm not sure you should be surprised.