TREACHERY AS THERAPY (via Mike Daley):

KEEP ON GROVELIN: Have you heard of John McCain? (Russ Smith, NY Press)

The most recent example in the schoolgirl desire for McCain to team up with John Kerry against Bush this November-sort of like writing a love letter to Davy Jones or Bobby Sherman in the 60s-was David Ignatius' naive essay in last Friday's Washington Post.

Ignatius, who for the sake of the country, endorses Kerry's selection of the pompous Arizona senator for his running mate, was, I suppose, one of the hundreds of journalists who gabbled with McCain aboard the "Straight Talk Express" four years ago, sharing a cup of coffee, donuts and quality time with the Keating Five oracle.

He writes: "Despite McCain's public demurrals, he has been privately deliberating how things might work if he ever did agree to run as Kerry's vice presidential candidate. The bitter political divide in America worries McCain, especially when the nation is at war. He knows that for many
Americans, he has become a symbol of bipartisanship that could overcome these divisions-and bring Red and Blue America closer together. That call to duty is powerful for McCain. He'll be 68 later this summer, and he knows that his time to shape American public life is now."

There's been a lot of nonsense on this subject, especially in the past fortnight, but the foul aroma of Ignatius' brown-nosing is the worst yet. He claims that Moses McCain could unite "Red and Blue America." It makes one ill just to consider the holes in Ignatius' argument. McCain, unless he's lied the past several months, always a possibility, has insisted in countless statements (including several in the last four days) that he likes Kerry but their political views aren't sufficiently compatible to make such a scenario plausible. It's true that the senator hasn't exactly bolted the door shut, but that's probably a function of his need for publicity and attention, a disorder that's dwarfed only by Bill Clinton's and Eliot Spitzer's.

McCain correctly fears that he'd function largely as a Kerry ornament, a ruse to win the election, and then be pitched in the dustbin of ignored vice presidents. And it's not as if, should such a team get elected, McCain will run for the top job eight years from now. Ignatius does acknowledge McCain's concern that he'd be "put on ice" in a Kerry administration when he opposed his boss. No kidding, John.

Remember how Jim Jeffords brought us all together and helped heal the wounds of the 2000 election?

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 16, 2004 11:56 PM