John McCain's Struggle

Have you ever noticed how John McCain seems like he has lost his soul? As in, literally lost that possibly existent thing we all talk about as holding those intrinsic and specific ideals that make us unique? The John McCain of 2000 (or hell, 2005) was strikingly different than the John McCain of 2007 and beyond – but we all know that, it is old news. But have you ever looked at the man?

There are telling moments when he seems physically pained; it is almost as if his mind is tearing itself apart. He has turned against so many things he strongly believed in before (or at least strongly supported) and it is as if his entire person has not acclimated yet to the new approach. You can tell, after watching enough videos, that his perpetual and giant smile is forced. He has a normal smile, as do all people, but the politician smile he never acquired until recently. Usually, John McCain, when not speaking, will have a solemn, pensive look on his face; I have seen it dozens of times. Now, however, when he is not speaking, he wears this large, overly extroverted smile and after enough viewings, you can see where his face twitches a bit, where his cheek bones struggle to stay as close to his eyes as possible, and where his eyebrows look as if they want to sit down for a bit. Before, he used this smile when speaking, or when laughing, and so on, but now that it is a constant adornment of his façade, it is tiresome, to us and him. This is merely the beginnings of the deconstruction of this man, a simple external feature.

Watch a portion of a speech or a response to a debate question that concerns the Bush tax cuts as well as something else. When speaking about the other issues, he carries himself with a certain air, speaks with a certain confidence and familiarity that you see in people who are sure of themselves, sure of what they are saying, and feel a certain intimacy with it. When McCain begins arguing the positive aspects of a policy that renews the Bush tax cuts, there is a change, sometimes subtle, sometimes very obvious. His sentences flow less smoothly, his sense of intimacy with the subject lessens, and his demeanor seems to shift slightly. Deep down, he is clearly not comfortable with what he is doing and it is tearing him apart.

Watch him give stump speeches at rallies. Watch him stumble through those call and response segments where he gets the crowd fired up and motivated to sustain their fervor through the whole speech. Those little games, those little toys and tricks of political speeches that involve stating a certain position or a fact, listening to the crowd react unfavorably, and then tearing it down to great applause and cheers – they do not sit well with John McCain, who is clearly unsettled every time he has to sustain a broad smile for forty-five minutes while giving some awful speech that is short on details and long on rhetoric (and not good rhetoric, either).

Compare this to Barack Obama, who also favors a different kind of speech-giving, who is more comfortable espousing the ins and outs and ups and downs of policy than the Martin Luther King, Jr. rhetoric that soars above the universe. The difference? Obama does not show his discomfort. In the 90’s, Obama was an awful speech giver; he would drone on and on about policy and laws and the constitution, boring the hell out of his listeners. It was only when he met a guy (whose name I cannot recall from memory) who told him what he was doing it all wrong and encouraged him to educate himself on “the great speech givers” and their techniques. Soon after, Obama began perfecting the rhetoric he is very well known for today and the rest is, as they say (I usually do not say, however), history. Though Obama would rather write an essay for the Harvard Law Review about the inherent vagueness of some constitutional principle, the reasons the Framers wrote it as such, and the positives of such a framing, he foregoes his own longings and gets the job done He feels much better dealing with details, wrapping his mind around the ins and outs of a problem, and working it all over like kneading bread dough. There is a certain pleasure to it, and a rhythm that develops that becomes intoxicating, and I am sure that is one reason Obama finds it so appealing. But no matter how uncomfortable the rhetoric may seem to him, he finds a way to get through it without anyone noticing. McCain, however, has not.

So why is John McCain so opposed to these changes? It seems that he has a very strong loyalty to his principles. Whatever his principles may be, he likes them best and wants to stick with them. And this should come as no surprise and should, after all, seem rather intuitive, for the conservative mind has a stronger tendency to place importance on things like loyalty and tradition. Irrespective of the pros and cons of such a mindset, it is the way it is. A liberal mind, for contrast, is going to tend towards ‘tolerance’ (or what they see as tolerance) and change (or what they see as change). So it is no large surprise that McCain would find such changes as he has been making throughout the campaign to be uncomfortable and unnerving. This also explains why Obama can so easily disguise whatever discomfort he may have in shifting positions to reflect the center on issues or engaging in exorbitant amounts of rhetorical speech at rallies: his mind is naturally more open to change and new ideas, so it is easier to accept certain things to gain ground.

So whether or not I agree with John McCain’s principles, the man has them and he strongly wants to stick to them. But he is also a rambling, gambling man, a straight-shooter who “does what he wants,” so to speak. I honestly think he tends towards maverick-ism because he likes standing out. He did so constantly during his military service; he was considered a brash, young buck of a pilot, sort of a Tom Cruise/Top Gun character. So maybe the reason he originally opposed the Bush tax cuts was because he was still steaming about his demonization in the Republican primaries and wanted to stick it to the President – it would make him a maverick, a standout among the crowd, just what he has always been.

So when he modifies his positions to look like a standard Republican candidate, it must eat his heart up inside. It must feel like some acidic disease is slowly devouring his organs, gradually assimilating destruction to his entire body. His spirit must be crushed every time he repeats a party line, every time he compliments Sarah Palin, and every time he shuts his mouth and lets his advisors do some dirty work.

So watch McCain next time, try to notice the little ticks, the changes in intimacy and familiarity, the constant struggle to sustain that inhuman smile. Watch him and feel his pain, feel his hurt, feel the emptiness in the room as he searches for his soul from among a sea of devils (though he may be one as well). Watch him die on stage, for Pro-America America