1115.org

Sidney Blumenthal in The Guardian on the John McCain we don’t know (yet):

The titles of his books reflect the image: Character Is Destiny, Why Courage Matters, and Faith of My Fathers. Defeat at the hands of George Bush in the battle for the Republican nomination in 2000, in which he was subjected to dirty tricks, completed his canonisation. The press corps so venerated him that he called them “my base”.

McCain’s political colleagues, however, know another side of the action hero - a volatile man with a hair-trigger temper, who shouted at Senator Ted Kennedy on the Senate floor to “shut up”, and called fellow Republican senators “shithead … fucking jerk … asshole”. A few months ago, McCain suddenly rushed up to a friend of mine, a prominent Washington lawyer, at a social event, and threatened to beat him up because he represented a client McCain happened to dislike. Then, just as suddenly, profusely and tearfully, he apologised.

And this is the man who would be President? I would laugh – at him and at the very idea – except that I laughed at Bush too when his name first came up for the presidency. So now I look very hard in the mirror, and ask myself: “Would an electorate that elected – or “elected” – Bush twice have any qualms about electing McCain? And I don’t think I like at all what the mirror-mirror-on-the-wall says back to me. Maybe it is time for another potty-mouth Republican president?