Wednesday, August 1, 2007

McCain: Born to lose?


By PAT MURPHY

As one of those who met John McCain and his millionairess second wife when he arrived in Arizona in the early 1980s to launch a political career, I claim some insight into the man and his proclivities. Like others who've encountered the initially charming, ingratiating McCain, I experienced a yo-yo relationship—a friendship abruptly ended by McCain vindictiveness when our newspaper, The Arizona Republic, discovered his instinct for lies and unleavened, coarse behavior toward those insufficiently obeisant to his grand ambitions to leap from the House to the Senate and then the presidency.

Others have offered complex theories of why McCain has plunged from a near-miss to the presidency in 2000 to the humiliation of a 2008 campaign financially destitute and chaotic with mass staff desertions.

I have a simpler explanation.

McCain is a hapless wannabe who was born to lose, a victim of hard luck whose capacity for gaffes, fawning over the wrong people, poor snap judgment and bad breaks make his White House ambitions impossible.

Check McCain's life line for yourself:

· Almost expelled from the Naval Academy for brawling and drinking, graduating fifth from the bottom of his class.

· Crashes a training jet.

· Nearly killed when a rocket fired from his parked carrier jet ignited an inferno on the USS Forrestal.

· Shot down and imprisoned in Vietnam.

· POW injuries prevent him from becoming the family's third-generation carrier admiral.

· Divorced after numerous post-Vietnam affairs.

· Introduced to Phoenix corporate bigwigs by megarich master swindler Charlie Keating, for whom McCain unwisely intervened with savings and loan regulators plus using Keating's private jet for Bahamas vacations, leading to a congressional rebuke.

· Prickly temper becomes notorious.

· Tries to sabotage testimony of Arizona governor at U.S. Senate hearing with difficult planted questions, denies the dirty trick, then admits it and apologizes.

· Ingratiates himself with Arizona Republic "war hero" publisher to be godfather to his first child at flamboyant church rites attended by hundreds; publisher exposed as never having been in military service, leaves town.

· Political apologists for Arizona GOP governor convicted of fraud and ousted from office (conviction reversed on appeal).

· Foot-in-mouth blunders require constant McCain apologies to ethnic groups, colleagues, President Clinton's family, Mormons, and others.

· Abandons his maverick "Straight Talk" persona to become mouthpiece for unpopular President Bush on unpopular Iraq war; reverses himself on "agents of intolerance" charge against rightwing evangelicals in hopes of their support in 2008.

This behavior is not the stuff of a 21st century U.S. president.




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