It's way to early to start speculating on '08 presidential candidates. It might be more fun to start culling the weak ones from the herd -- eliminating the candidates it's pretty easy to say won't make the final cut. My first nomination to the Goner category is John McCain. He has long since lost his reputation as a straight shooter. The more people he tries to appeal to, the less coherent he sounds. This is just absolutely stupid:
In a sign that he wants to distance himself from the president - to whom he lost in an ugly campaign in 2000 - Sen McCain outlined a series of measures to roll back Bush policies and counter the "ugly American" image.
"I would immediately close Guantanamo Bay, move all the prisoners to Fort Leavenworth (an army base in Kansas) and truly expedite the judicial proceedings in their cases," he said. "I would reaffirm my commitment to address the issue of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. I know how important this is in Europe in particular."
John Weaver, Sen McCain's chief strategist, confirmed his plans for a markedly more conciliatory foreign policy. "The next president will have to work extra hard to unite our friends and divide our foes. Sadly the opposite has occurred in recent years," he said, as Sen McCain addressed a crowded hall in the farming community of Cedar Falls.
Europeans haven't loved us for a long time, for a lot of reasons, and what they think about us should be of little consequence to American foregn policy. Our foreign policy under Bush has largely shifted from multilateralism to unilateralism, and there are serious implications in that needing to be discussed. But this trivial Ugly American crap, no more attractive from John McCain than it was from John Kerry, is no help to that task.
