Sad, pathetic nobody

Once upon a time, there was a man who was regarded as some sort of hero, a man who stood up to the ideologues of his own party to chart a maverick’s course. He was respected even by adversaries and was once even considered a possibility for US President.

That version of John McCain is dead and the US Senate is left with Zombie McCain shuffling around looking for more brains to eat. Well he would, wouldn’t he? He’s clearly lost his own.

I simply can’t believe how quickly and completely McCain has become an angry, grumpy old man devoid of reason and even rationality. His bizarre obsession with stopping the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, and his willingness to keep changing his reasons for doing so as each one was dealt with, have left him alone and isolated way out on the fringe with some Republicans who are not at all nice people. Some company.

I could engage in armchair psychology and suggest that he’s descended into psychosis as the result of his loss in the 2008 election—a psychosis that probably happened in part because of his mistake in picking the former half-term governor of Alaska as his running mate, unleashing her and him as national jokes. I could suggest that, and I might even be right, but in the end it doesn’t matter why he’s fallen so far off the beam: He just has.

John McCain could’ve gone down in history as a credible politician, one who ably used his abilities to get some of his agenda accomplished. Instead, he’ll be remembered—if he is at all—as a sad, pathetic nobody who found himself on the wrong side of history and chose to dig a trench and fight a battle that was already lost.

It was his choice to become Zombie McCain. Best we just leave him to decay in peace (well, in pieces, if you want to be true to the idiom).