{"id":262,"date":"2008-02-20T06:55:37","date_gmt":"2008-02-20T11:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=262"},"modified":"2008-02-19T23:05:44","modified_gmt":"2008-02-20T04:05:44","slug":"the-two-sides-of-john-mccain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=262","title":{"rendered":"The two sides of John McCain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ryan Lizza observes the “two sides of McCain”<\/a> in a long and thoughtful piece that is much about the media’s love for Senator John McCain as it is about Mr. McCain himself:<\/p>\n

There is the principled McCain, who, more than any other candidate running for President this year, has a record of sticking to a position even when it puts his political future at risk. In this campaign, his positions on the surge and on immigration (he supported a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship for illegals) almost sank him. But there is also the political McCain, who knows that a reputation for standing on principle is a valuable commodity, though only if it\u2019s well advertised. If it takes flogging a dodgy quote to emphasize a larger truth about your own character, then so be it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That seems to be as good of a preview as any of what the public will have to watch for in the coming months.\u00a0 I didn’t care for Governor Mitt Romney – and I was too focused on the Democratic primaries to care much about the Republican race for a few weeks there where the political McCain came barging onto the political scene, repeatedly using a fabricated point to make the case against Mr. Romney.\u00a0 In this instance, if not previously in his career, Mr. McCain demonstrated a willingness to go for the body blow, to kick a candidate when he was down, and to make sure his opponent wouldn’t be able to make a comeback in time for the bell.\u00a0 Politics is a contact sport, so I don’t begrudge Mr. McCain that.<\/p>\n

But it’s worth noticing…and it’s also worth noting that Mr. McCain used an extreme distortion of his opponent’s position repeatedly and with almost Clintonian obtuseness.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ryan Lizza observes the “two sides of McCain” in a long and thoughtful piece that is much about the media’s love for Senator John McCain as it is about Mr. McCain himself: There is the principled McCain, who, more than any other candidate running for President this year, has a record of sticking to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22,45,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-2008","category-mccain","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-4e","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}