A Fighter By His Trade

What has become of John McCain the Fighter? He is supposed to be a feisty maverick (there's that word again) but the feistiness seems to have been replaced with grandfatherliness. The Fighter has not landed a damaging blow on his opponent, also known as "That Guy" in two debates. He seems to be pulling his punches, like a man who doesn't want to appear to be on the attack. A pussyfooter is not what America needs right now. It needs John McCain the Fighter.

The Straight Talk Express has gone off the rails like a Crazy Train, lacking focus and fortitude. Rather than tackle issues head on McCain prefers to appear to tackle issues, as when he "suspended" his campaign, went to Washington for meetings on the economic "crisis" and did nothing of any substance before hitting the road again. Even worse, he skipped out on an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, only to be caught in the act with Katie Couric at the same time he should have been talking to Dave. Letterman spent almost his entire show that night lambasting McCain. Bad move, John. McCain the Fighter would not have run away from Dave and into the arms of Katie.

McCain needs to come with some solid ideas about turning the economy around, but perhaps even more importantly he needs to pound Obama about Iraq, something he had an opportunity to do in last nights debate, but choose not to, or is perhaps incapable of doing at this point. Obama was not just wrong about the surge, he was wrong about Iraq. The United States had every right to invade a country that we perceived to be an imminent danger to our security. (Intelligence was bad, and Donald Rumsfelds plan to conduct the war was awful, but that's a blog posting for another day.) The United Nations had stated that if Saddam Hussein did not allow weapons inspectors into Iraq one of the ways he could be punished was with his forcible removal from power. When the UN chose not to remove Hussein it became the right and the obligation of the US to do so. John McCain the Fighter would have told Obama that last night. The current John McCain did not and is on his way to becoming the Bob Dole of the 21st century.