The True Test for McCain

As a Karl Rove protégé takes charge of his faltering campaign, a character question comes up: Does John McCain have it in him to get into the mud to win ugly?

Repelled by Rovian tactics in 2000 to the point of openly considering switching parties, McCain is clearly under pressure now to sign on to smearing Obama with the kind of dirt that did him in back then and the Swiftboating of John Kerry that he deplored in 2004.

Up to now, McCain has been willing to shift positions on issues to mollify the Republican Right and win the nomination but he clearly drew a line at personal attacks on his rivals in the primaries.

Now, amid all the talk about sharpening his message, the Republican standard bearer faces a different reality: With all the baggage of the Bush years, there is very little likelihood that McCain can win this election on policy issues, no matter how adroitly he frames them, and adroit has been in short supply so far.

The only way he can hope to prevail is by turning away from his lifetime dedication to personal honor and allow his campaign to sow the kind of fear and doubt about Obama that was used against him in South Carolina eight years ago.

Can a man in his seventies change that much? Along the way, McCain may want to consider the rueful wisdom of Adlai Stevenson, who lost the presidency twice half a century ago: "The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning."

Family Counseling for the McCains

Irony is now officially dead as Karl Rove advises John McCain in today's Wall Street Journal to "share a personal narrative about his life, values and inner beliefs" with voters.

Eight years ago, Rove and his crew concocted their own for McCain and shared it widely in South Carolina before the 2000 primaries that helped seal the nomination for George W. Bush--a man emotionally damaged by his years as a POW with a wife addicted to pain killers, the father of an illegitimate, interracial child.

As recently as last June, Mrs. McCain told a reporter that her family was still dealing with the "emotional fallout," that Bridget, their adopted daughter who was born in Bangladesh and was then 15, learned about the accusations while Googling her own name and went to her mother in tears.

“She wanted to know why President Bush hated her,” Mrs. McCain said. “And I had to explain to her that it wasn’t the president that hated her, that no one hates her...I had to explain to her how nasty campaigns can be.”

Now Bush is embracing McCain in the Rose Garden, and Rove is telling him how to swiftboat Obama and Clinton. "Nasty" seems like a pale word.