McCain, The Fallen Hero

As I wrote earlier this week, the central drama of the Republican Convention was not the emergence of Governor Sarah Palin, but could Senator John McCain adequately distance himself from this terribly disapointing era of GOP governance to give himself a shot at winning this thing?

As of this morning while I think McCain and his team tried very hard and had a strong last 2 days of the Convention I'm not sure they pulled it off. Hurricane Gustav did its part, knocking Bush and Cheney off the stage without disrupting the rest of the Convention. And Sarah Palin did her part, and has now arrived on the national stage as a powerful new part of the GOP's future. We also saw all sorts of GOP moderates, not normally associated with hard right conservative politics. We were bombarded with iconic American images, mostly from a time gone by. We heard about the virtues of small town life and the dangers of cosmopolitianism. We saw large and attractive families, strong and articulate women, and a never ending stream of American flags. What we almost never heard about was George Bush.

While Palin was a glimpse of the GOP's future, most of what we saw was an evocation of the GOP's and America's past. After all John McCain was born a long time ago. He is the oldest man to be the nominee of either Party. He is very much a man of the 20th century, of its battles, struggles and culture. The problem for him is that past includes the GOP's recent Washington ascendency a period which has without doubt been among the worst periods of goverance America has ever seen.

In his speech last night John McCain acknowledges his disapointment with his Party in recent years, and while he does his best to spread the blame the thrust of his remarks are clear:

I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger. We lost their trust when instead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties and Senator Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost their trust, when we valued our power over our principles.

And in watching him last night, this aging warrior, I got the sense that he knew that it was unlikely that he was going to win this election and lead this fight in restoring his Party. That he could craft a road map, and promote the leaders - like Palin and Ridge and Whitman - whom he hoped would carry on this important fight. But that the damage done by the recent conservative rise was too great, too fresh and that too many of its leaders were still in positions of power; that he, by adopting so many of the core arguments of this era to win the nomination was no longer the man of virtue he once was; and that he at the end of the day simply does not have a big enough vision, enough energy, enough understanding of the moment to be the one who can lead this post Bush-DeLay-Abramoff Party forward.

Which is perhaps why this Convention spent so much time talking about him and his past - it was in essence a validictory event rather than the beginning of a winning campaign. And that it did achieve something very important to McCain - the beginning of the liberation of the Party he loves from the grips of corrupt, weak and ineffective leaders. That my friends is no small accomplishment, and one that McCain seems to be in the process of pulling off. Whether however he can do the next thing - make a more compelling argument about the future than his opponents - remains to be seen. The task of doing so became almost impossible when McCain sacrified his own beliefs and principles to win the GOP primary, and in my gut I think he knows this.

More than anyone else John McCain knows that the mythical character he has become is not the successful aging warrior, but the fallen hero, overwhelmed by events much greater than him. And that his year he will do his part and fight the good fight all the while knowing that it will be others who end up carrying on and winning the battle that he began waging in St. Paul.