By his own hand, John McCain is unraveling the "maverick" image he created and nurtured with the connivance of the Washington press since he dropped into Arizona to fill Rep. John Rhodes' open congressional seat in 1982.
It's no crime, of course, but McCain is revealing the same avarice, artifices and ambition of most Washington politicians.
Naïve McCain groupies, however, must feel betrayed as McCain's carefully polished façade of supposedly unshakable principle is peeled away to reveal deceptions that McCainiacs believed he rejected.
McCain's changing principles have taken on momentum in his struggle to remain the frontrunner among GOP conservatives.
The Washington Post disclosed Sunday that McCain is now squeezing big money donors for millions of dollars for his presidential plans—the same big buck donors he once condemned as "corrupt" influences and that he even sued to stop from funneling millions to politicians (see www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/10/AR2007021001510.html).
Remember how McCain railed against dirty tricks and smears that strategists used against him in 2000, against John Kerry in 2004 and against Tennessee African-American Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr. in 2006? Well, McCain has now hired most of those dirty tricks architects for his own campaign. Does this hint of McCain tactics to come?
There's more flip-flopping. In his failed 2000 presidential bid, McCain denounced rightwing Rev. Jerry Falwell as an "agent of intolerance." Now, McCain embraces Falwell in exchange for his support in 2008. Falwell has even invited McCain to the religious broadcasters convention.
The undoing of the McCain "maverick" pose is accelerating with new Internet videos of McCain contradicting himself, including flip-flops on gay marriage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioy90nF2anI) and a clip of him vowing to "tell the truth always."
But McCain continues to enjoy privileged treatment among some Washington media that shy away from questioning the integrity of his flip-flops.
Now, 33 years after his release from a Vietnam POW camp, for example, stories inevitably dote on him as a war hero and POW, conveying a certain respectful awe.
McCain's spin factory brilliantly fabricated the image of McCain as the honest "straight talk" politician by inviting reporters aboard his "Straight Talk Express" bus for chummy rap sessions that turned some of them into star-struck admirers.
Reporters who dare question McCain's character, however, endure outbursts of the blistering McCain temper, a sure tactic for discouraging further questions. Nosy reporters who are unimportant to his ambitions are simply ignored.
Republicans who denounced Sen. John Kerry in 2004 as a flip-flopping presidential candidate are faced with their own integrity test. Will they condemn McCain's 180-degree turns on issues as flip-flops or excuse them as "enlightened rethinking"?
