"HIS AMBITION HAS MADE HIM A COWARD." I like how you put that, Charlie. I know that ambition corrupts, and absolute ambition corrupts absolutely, but I'm still a bit shocked and awed at the depths to which McCain has dropped. Put aside his faux-ideological independence, his disheartening ability to pass off traditional conservatism as modern centrism. The one thing McCain always retained, and always seemed serious about, was an elevated expectation for politics. He seemed to believe that campaigns should be about something more than decontextualized votes and misleading attacks. He'd intervene even when the negative ad, judged by the standards such things are judged, was an average attack. He bristled to see the patriotism impugned or character attacked. That was his virtue: He convinced the country that he was above politics by, at times, being above politics. And yet here he is, doing all the worse, and he must knows it. It's hard to look at this situation and not pity John Kerry. JK is, by all accounts, a good man, a thoughtful man, a decent man, but one who is singularly incapable of thriving in the soundbite era. His mistake is easy enough to understand, if only because no candidate with an eye towards 2008 would dare suggest our troops are anything but ubermenschen with Mensa memberships. And it's easy enough to understand why the right jumped on it -- they are desperate, bloodthirsty, and base. But McCain, who knows both the intent of his ambitious friend's comment and the agony its misinterpretation is surely causing him, would have once intervened to ensure a good man is not brought low by this sort of meaningless bullshit. Today, he will be the the hack with the knife. I hope it's worth it for him. I can't imagine it will be. --Ezra Klein
