There’s a fantastic sketch in the first season of Mr. Show that parodies religious talk shows like the 700 Club in which a member of an ex-gay ministry recounts his various lapses into “homosinuality“. The kicker is at the end when the host, previewing an upcoming interview, says “[He] will tell us about his most recent lapse and the lapse he has planned for August which should take him to Rio de Janeiro.” This, for some reason, reminds me of the best quote about John McCain I’ve read anywhere :

The contradictions give rise to questions about the essential McCain. Is he an opportunist with a conscience, or a man with so singular a moral compass that sometimes only he knows where it points?

In fact, McCain lives by a series of honor codes, instilled in him by his father (an admiral) and his father’s father (also an admiral). To boil them down to their simplest formulation: One must never lie, cheat or steal. McCain would be the first to admit that he has failed, sometimes spectacularly, at all three. But he also has perfected the familiar American ritual of coming clean and moving on.

“He is the best apologizer in politics,” said Dan Schnur, who was McCain’s campaign spokesman in 2000 and now directs the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC.

That’s John McCain in a nutshell.

I find it amazing that so many in the press seemed so disillusioned by John McCain’s campaign this year and were so quick to praise his gracious concession speech as the “real” McCain. He’s the honorable “country first” public servant AND the sleazy opportunist scumbag who spent the last few weeks implying that our next president is a terrorist-affiliated, socialist America-hater. McCain acolytes are so in love with the notion of McCain the POW who has bravely owns up to his moral failings, they overlook the fact that his string of moral and ethical lapses are as intristic parts of his character as the virtues that he extols on the campaign trail. John McCain the honor-obsessed POW and John McCain the lobbyist-courting adulterer are the SAME PERSON. They’re both the “real” McCain.

As Barack Obama begins the hard work of turning his campaign promises into reality come January, we’ll see constant reminders that the nasty xenophobia of the McCain/Palin campaign has poisoned the well of public opinion. John McCain didn’t have to run a dirty campaign. He could have just been the decent man that we’ve all seen he can be. Rather than lose a campaign with his dignity intact, John McCain made a choice to repeat his cycle of dishonor followed by a public show of remorse. Fool me once and all that.

So while many might want to look at John McCain’s concession speech and his inevitable public mea culpas as a return to form, forgiveness for “the best apologizer in politics” won’t be coming quickly from me. Anyone who follows John McCain’s career could have seen his campaign’s “relapse” coming from a mile away. Spare me.