An Open Letter to Senator John McCain

Senator McCainSenator McCain,

We want to forgive you. Those of us in the country who were disgusted by your campaign's turn into the muck over the last week want to forgive you. Those of us who supported you in 2000 when you ran against George W. BushGeorge W. Bush, and now cannot recognize the difference in your policies want to forgive you.

You have some good ideas. Anyone who takes the time to look into your campaign's ideas can see the good ideas at the center, wrapped up in conflicting layers of conservative appeasement. Your latest idea of helping people stay in their homes by buying up the bad mortgages and refinancing them at the new, lower, home values had merit. Then your "policy makers" got their hands on it and made the people have to take the losses instead of the banks that made the bad loans in the first place. "We never meant to include that in the plan." they said. I'd like to think you did.

In 2000 you showed voters that you could temper your want for economic deregulation with an eye on the economic class differences in America. Yet eight years later, even though the policies you backed helped lead us into economic turmoil, and the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" as you called them in 2000 has only gotten worse, you seem unable to untie yourself from the Bush doctrine of "make the rich richer".

In 2000 you were the victim of some of the sleaziest, unethical attacks seen in presidential politics since the days of the Civil War. You lost the vote, but you gained the respect of those who watched you turn the other cheek and not sink to their level. Yet now, eight years later, you not only hired most of those same people to run your campaign, but you let them sling even more grotesque mud at Barack ObamaBarack Obama than was ever slung at you.

I saw your reaction today when the elderly woman tried to say that Obama was an Arab. I saw the look of shock, or was it revelation, on your face as you told her "No, no he's not." I heard the crowd turn against you when you tried to tell them that Obama was a good man who you fundamentally disagreed with on policy. Are you starting to realize the hypocrisy? Are you beginning to realize that your "advisors" are using you? They don't care if YOU get elected, they just care that a Republican gets elected. They want a clone of Bush, a policy puppet, something you never were. Why are you letting them turn you into one now?

You still have time Senator. There are weeks left in this campaign in which you can either let the people you've surrounded yourself with drag you further into the muck, or you can stand up and renounce the direction your campaign has taken, throw the muckrakers under the Straight Talk Express, and regain your dignity.

The odds are you're not going to win in November, whichever path you take. One path, however, will let your moderate supporters, and those of us who respected you, look back on this as a bad campaign run by a good man. The other path may just tie you to Bush not just in policy, but in reputation, for the rest of your career.

Sincerely,

A McCain Supporter Eight Years Ago