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May 15, 2008

Straight-Talk Derailed
Posted by Patrick Barry

For years, John McCain has been touting his 'straight-talk express,' a place where he can candidly discuss the issues with the American people, a place free of the sound-bytes, exaggerations, and empty promises that typify life on the campaign trail.  For years, this thrill-ride of openness has excused every foible, every embellishment, every distortion that the Senator has made, all because Mr. Straight-Shooter says he wants nothing more than to have an honest discussion with regular folks. 

This train has kept-a-rollin’ even as the Senator from Arizona has dropped bomb after illogical, ill-founded bomb. He claimed on Hardball that there wasn’t a history of violent clashes between Sunnis and Shia in Iraq. Even as reality caught up with him, McCain declared on Face the Nation that troops could be there for as long as 10,000 years so they weren’t on the “front lines.” Turning a country riven by bloody, sectarian conflict into a troop-filled, but violence-free utopia would be a pretty astounding feat, but no one ever bothered to ask McCain how he intended to achieve it. Bob Schieffer barely followed-up.

Today, however, the straight-talk express finally careened off the tracks. Sanguine, rosy-eyed, pollyannaish, none of these words come close to describing the piece of delusional farce that passed as McCain’s vision for the world’s foreign policy. Iraq democratic, Bin Laden defeated, Afghanistan stabilizing.  He literally promised everything except a pony for each toddler. What he didn’t do was explain how he would it all happen.  He never once elaborated on what he would do to bring this dream to fruition.  Instead he stood contentedly at the podium, more than willing to prize sound-byte over substance, more than happy to make empty promises, believing that Americans would give him one more pass. 

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