Cynics may see this as keeping the subject alive
before media attention shifts to the House on the fiscal cliff, but a longer
view suggests something much more than McCain’s last hurrah for attention.
Eight years ago, when Democrats (not including Barack
Obama and Joe Biden who voted to confirm her) were harrumphing about Condoleeza
Rice’s appointment to the job, McCain nailed them with an accusation:
"I wonder why we are starting this new Congress
with a protracted debate about a foregone conclusion. I can only conclude that
we are doing this for no other reason than because of lingering bitterness over
the outcome of the election."
Since then, McCain has become a case study in
lingering bitterness as he morphed from outspoken maverick to cranky old
conservative with a hair-trigger temper.
His behavior now recalls the Karl Rove campaign in 2000
primaries against Bush to paint him as psychologically damaged by his years as
a POW.
The long history of that subject embraces the Stockholm Syndrome of bonding with captors through the Manchurian Candidate
right up to the current award-winning Showtime series “Homeland” in which a
Marine held for years by Middle East terrorists is freed to become a covert
agent for them as he rises up the political ladder.
Beyond such paranoid fantasies is the reality of John
McCain, a carefree son of Navy privilege who came back from captivity to serve
in the Senate and run for President with every expectation of ending in the
White House until W and then Obama derailed him.
Sarah Palin aside, he must still be haunted by 2008
what-ifs, including the economic meltdown that helped defeat him. If he is still
bitter, how much of it is displaced rage against the Bush machine that defeated
him twice and set up his defeat by Obama?
In his final days on the public stage, John McCain is
acting out his own lingering bitterness against the only target available to
him, but in the depths of his own mind Obama is almost surely not the only
object of his inner rage.
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