The Consultant Trap

John McCain is not such a bad guy. Seriously. He's being sold bad.

I saw this happen to the Democrats in the last two cycles. Al Gore is a warm funny guy but when the DNC was in charge of him he was wooden, restrained by dozens of rules about what not to say and what talking points to hit. Kerry... well, I don't know about Kerry. I'm still not completely convinced he's human.

But John McCain is also an appealing guy, and has shown a refreshing tendency to speak his mind in the past. Had it been him against Gore it might have been a serious contest. But the past four years he's been forced into the same straightjacket that they put Gore into - instead of speaking his own mind, he's speaking the RNC's collective mind. And this has made him appear erratic, made him endorse tactics he probably doesn't agree with. Being made into a mouthpiece has taken away McCain's best thing.

Interestingly, the same thing is surely going on with Obama. But he wears it better. I'm not sure if I like the implications of that, but at least I don't KNOW he's selling himself out.

Truth is, when you brush all the hatred aside these are both decent, capable men. Either one could run the country and neither would plunge us into the new dark ages. My gut feeling is Obama will repair more Bush-era damage than McCain would have.