by James Glaser
April 10, 2007

John McCain had his chance at running for president back in 2000. He even could have pulled it off in 2004, but he has waited too long. You see, he has given too many speeches, and his words are now catching up with him.

Back in 2000 McCain was all about campaign finance reform, and he had many fooled into believing that he was some sort of a maverick republican who would not follow the party line, but would work to bring integrity back to Washington.

The problem with that kind of campaign is that eventually people realize that there never was much integrity in Washington, and after eight years of listening, people now know John McCain has been one of George Bush's strongest backers for his war in Iraq. It is hard to say you are a maverick when you follow the administration line as closely are McCain has.

To make matters worse, Senator McCain has now had to admit that he has been lying to the American people about how well things are going in Iraq.

A couple weeks ago Senator McCain was claiming that General Petraeus, the new commander of our forces in Iraq, was driving around Baghdad in unarmored humvees. General Petraeus's staff reported that seldom did the General use even an armored humvee, the General used much safer transportation than that. To try and salvage his story about how safe Baghdad is now, John McCain made a trip to Iraq and went shopping at a market, saying that the place was safe for Americans. As Juan Cole puts it in Salon.com:

Then, on April 1, in an attempt to back up his words, McCain went on his infamous Baghdad shopping trip. The Internet was soon awash with mocking photos of McCain strolling blithely through the Shurja market in a Kevlar vest. On Sunday, "60 Minutes" ran footage of McCain dickering over a rug with a merchant, then pulled back to show the senator surrounded by heavily armed and armored U.S. troops, and also mentioned that attack helicopters were hovering overhead.

To make matters even worse than that, now the Senator is admitting, "Of course I'm gonna misspeak, I've done it on numerous occasions. And I probably will in the future. I regret that when I divert attention to something that I've said from my message. But that's life. And I'm happy, frankly, with the way I operate. Otherwise it'd be a lot less fun."

I guess telling the truth might be less fun for a politician, but it sure would be nice to find one who thought it was the right thing to do. When a candidate for president admits that he has been lying and that he will probably lie in the future, and that he is happy about how he handles himself, well then it is time for that candidate to get out of the race.

George Bush has shown us what a president can do with a few well placed lies. Because George Bush lied to us, we now have almost 3,300 dead American troops, almost 25,000 wounded American troops, and hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded Iraqis.

We sure don't need another liar in the White House!

Post Script:

I'm calling John McCain's "misspeak" a lie. I have this rule of thumb that I use. I think about my parents. If I tried sugar coating my lie by telling my mother or father that I was just sort of "misspeaking," well for sure they wouldn't have let me get away with that. McCain uses 'misspeak" because "lying" sounds so bad. McCain was trying to get over on us, but he wouldn't have gotten over on my mom or dad, and he isn't getting over on me either. The man lied to all of us many times, and he admits that he will do so again in the future.

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