I KEEP TRYING TO figure out who John McCain is—what motivates him, why he behaves the way he does. He seems to be all over the map.
Three recent moments have highlighted this for me, and I've been trying to understand how they relate to each other:
-
During the second debate, when Obama reminded the crowd that McCain had sung "bomb bomb bomb Iran", McCain's first instinct was to lie about it, claiming that it had happened when he was joking around with an old buddy.
The fact was that he sang it to a crowd at a rally, and that his campaign then used the tune he sang it to as a sort of theme-song for a time after that.
This moment, taken in company with some of the open lies and unconscionable smears his campaign has promoted about Obama, seems to paint the picture of a man who has no character, who is, in his own words, running for the presidency out of pure ambition, and who will stop at nothing to get elected. -
However, things took an interesting turn shortly after the second debate.
The McCain campaign had begun to air some particularly nasty ads about Obama (approved by McCain), and Sarah Palin, in particular, began to work the crowds with veiled and vile accusations.
This all came to a peak at rallies where McCain himself was speaking. One woman in the crowd called Obama "an Arab", another man said he was scared of what would happen if Obama got elected, there were shouts of "traitor!" and "kill him!" coming from the crowds.
McCain's response to all this was fascinating. He lectured the crowds on respecting Obama, he said that there was no reason to be afraid of an Obama presidency, he said he admired Obama, and that their differences were about disagreements on policy.
He told the woman that she was wrong about Obama being an Arab—that he was a "decent, family-man, citizen". (McCain seemed completely unaware of the implication in the subtext of this response, but you can't have everything.)
One could argue, of course, that the latest new McCain is just a politician who has realized that the hate and fear tactics aren't working, but I don't want to think so. He seemed quite genuine in those moments, and quite unlike the McCain who lied about when and where he sang "Bomb bomb bomb Iran" in the second debate.
How do we reconcile those two? -
The key may lie in another recent moment, when McCain addressed a crowd of supporters as "my fellow prisoners".
He gave no sign, at the time, that he was aware of what he had just said, and it's quite possible that he wasn't conscious of it at all.
But it may be very telling.
Why would McCain instinctively refer to himself and his supporters as "prisoners"?
I have a theory:
When John McCain ran in the primaries against George W. Bush, he found himself in the middle of a sort of undeclared war.
On the other side was the Bush/Rove machine. They ran a nasty campaign, with no regard for the truth, and smeared McCain mercilessly with one lie after another.
And they won.
McCain learned a lesson on that battlefield, whether it was justified or not. He learned that if you want to win, you have to be willing to play dirty, and that certain people were a lot better at that game than he was.
It's my guess that he had no conception, at the time, as to just how dirty you had to play if you were going to use the Rove/Bush playbook. I think he kidded himself, telling himself that politics was a rough game, and that the other side knew it.
I think he even managed to forget, consciously, just how dirty they had played with him.
When it came time to pick a team, he picked people from the Rove team. He thought he could keep them under control. He was willing to play a little dirty, if necessary, in order to win; but he never expected it to go this far.
Obama was a better campaigner than he anticipated, and it became a real fight. He found himself agreeing to stretch the truth a little further, to move the punches a little lower.
When the financial crisis hit, he panicked. His handlers took advantage of that panic, and used it to gain more control over the campaign—to do more of what they had been itching to do all along.
By the time the second debate was over, McCain had lost himself, and lost control of his own organization. Palin was out there promoting hatred and fear, the television spots were not only 100% negative, but dishonest and in many cases a particularly nasty brand of negative.
The people who showed up at the rallies were not just angrier and more fearful, many were brainwashed—pumped full of lies, incapable in some cases of reason, anxious to say the "right" thing, the thing that their brainwashers had taught them.
At one of those events something deep in McCain's mind made the connection between himself and those people—both controlled by forces outside of themselves, forces only interested in winning: forces which, like his interrogators in Vietnam, would stop at nothing to get what they wanted.
In that same moment, his mind saw the parallel between his time as a prisoner of the enemy in Vietnam, and his current position as a prisoner of the Rove camp, his enemies when he ran against Bush, who now held the keys to the campaign he could not escape from.
This moment of clarity was deep in the recesses of his thought, and the only evidence, just then, was the phrase, "My fellow prisoners" which escaped his lips.
But it marked a shift which had already begun.
The more McCain became aware of the enormity of the hatred and fear his campaign was inspiring, the less he was able to tolerate it, at least in his own presence.
He began to speak out at those rallies against the raw hatred and racism, against the lies and unreasoned fear.
That's one possibility, the one I want to believe.
I want to believe that he was not so much trying to save the campaign in those moments as he was trying to save John McCain.
There's another explanation, of course, and it's not so pretty.
There's the possibility that the "fellow prisoners" line was just a simple gaffe, and that McCain is just playing "good cop, bad cop" with the American people.
It's possible that he's directed his campaign to incite the crowds with dishonest and shameful ads, that he's completely behind Palin's ugly rhetoric, that the whole idea is that they'll take the low road while he takes the high road.
McCain gets to look tolerant and respectful and honest in public, while he reaps the benefits of the dirty campaigning he pretends to disdain.
Maybe.
In the next few days we should know.
If it's all yet another dishonest hoax, Palin will continue with the implied slanders, and the smear ads will continue as well—just as they did when he "suspended" his campaign to go to Washington during the vote on the bail-out.
But if he means it, then he'll make Palin toe the line and he'll pull those dishonest ads.
It will be costly. He hasn't got much else going for him now, politically. A clean campaign will probably lose him the election.
But it just might gain him back his integrity.
