John McCain: A Matter of Character

By John Chuckman McCain does a good job with the appearance of a boyishly honest man. He puts on his quiet voice and uses his boyish (albeit now partially fossilized) expressions and, reminding me of Richard Nixon during something like his Checkers speech, sometimes glances down at his well-shined shoes, as though wordlessly to say, see what a good boy I am. McCain’s actual record of ethics and behavior is rather dreary, and it is a subject which mysteriously eludes treatment in mainline media which seem always ready to treat trivia like flag pins. There are many parallels of insensitivity, anger, aggression, limited capacities, and grotesque humor with George Bush. McCain was, quite simply, a nasty brat as a young man. There are many stories of the way he bullied others, including teachers, stories perhaps easy to make light of fifty years later, but not funny if you were his victim and, more importantly, all too similar to stories of his adult behavior. He was a ...