McCain: Epilogue

Before too much time passes, I need to comment on John McCain's concession speech the other night. Most people I've talked to or read are in agreement that he was both magnanimous and gracious in defeat. I think so too. But I think I also detected something else.

To me, the man actually seemed relieved. He seemed more at ease and delivered his speech with a sincerity that his presidential campaign clearly lacked. He seemed more like the man who, in the 2000 primaries before he sold his soul to the neo-con agenda, many of us were hoping would beat out G-Dub for the nom.

A few weeks ago, I was watching some of the pundits on one of the news-at-all-hours channels. They were discussing Senator McCain's lack of eye contact with Obama. One of the pundits stated that he had it on good authority from someone who's known Senator McCain for years that the reason he wouldn't - or couldn't - look Obama in the eye was because doing so reminded him of all that he had compromised to become the GOP nominee. The pundit said he was told that McCain had become the type of politician he, himself, detested.

I thought of that as I watched his speech the other night, and I wondered if that wasn't why he appeared so content with the loss. Maybe he took some solace in the fact that the person into whom he'd transformed himself, the kind of politician that would do and say anything to win, was not the people's choice for President this time. Perhaps this was some sort of validation for the person he'd been all those years, his true self.

Admittedly, I could be reading way too much into it. It could be that what I saw was an aged man who was happy for a little downtime after months of keeping up an extremely frenetic schedule. Maybe he was just elated that the election was over, whatever the outcome.

I guess I'll never know.

-e