if he ever was, McCain has become Richard III, Iago and Macbeth rolled into one.
He is the scheming, lame and eternally bitter Richard of Gloucester, needing to kill all goodness around him so as to never face that contrast to his black soul, and needing war, too, as peace gives him nowhere to put his rage:
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
He is Macbeth, desperately needing power to vanquish his consuming, existential fear:
Seyton!–I am sick at heart,
When I behold–Seyton, I say!–This push
Will cheer me ever, or disseat me now.
I have lived long enough: my way of life
Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.
But, most of all, McCain is Iago, feigning good will to “my friends” while seething with hatred for the Othello, the man who has so easily won the love and fealty that McCain believes - no, knows - is his due. Obama has not just won it for himself but stolen it, somehow. For how could Obama come by his popularity, his charisma, his charm but by some trick, some dark magic? It cannot be that McCain, son of an admiral, veteran of not only war but prison camp, can truly come in second to this young, black man:
The Moor, howbeit that I endure him not,
Is of a constant, loving, noble nature,
And I dare think he’ll prove to Desdemona
A most dear husband. Now, I do love her too;
Not out of absolute lust, though peradventure
I stand accountant for as great a sin,
But partly led to diet my revenge,
For that I do suspect the lusty Moor
Hath leap’d into my seat; the thought whereof
Doth, like a poisonous mineral, gnaw my inwards;
And nothing can or shall content my soul
Till I am even’d with him, wife for wife,
Or failing so, yet that I put the Moor
At least into a jealousy so strong
That judgment cannot cure.
It never ends well for Shakespeare’s villains; though Iago survives his treachery, his is the cursed half-life of a self-damned soul.
And so it will be with McCain, particularly if for the next 27 days he does nothing but attack Obama’s character. Doubtless it will narrow the point spread, but the poison will leech into McCain himself.
McCain has no Teflon; he does not have the same sociopathic amorality that allows George W. Bush and Sarah Palin to sail through the political waters unaffected by either the ugly truth or their own nasty lies. McCain can’t do the Bush/Palin “regular guy” schtick; he is largely charmless, and his meanness and spite comes from his tortured and all-too-easily wounded ego.
Somewhere, deep down, McCain recognizes the small scared and scarred man that he is, and each time he lashes out at Obama he rips of a piece of his own armor. He has done himself no service with his campaign, either politically or existentially. Whether he wins this race or loses, I believe he will have shortened his life substantially. All the more reason to vote against him.
But I cannot help feeling the same reluctant pity one feels for Richard III, who was born into the world a mean, ugly, angry little shit, always second to his handsome and primogenitor-blessed older brother, and destined to leave the world much the same as he entered it. John McCain certainly entered the world with significant advantages (and what he didn’t come by naturally he married into), but he also was born with a aircraft-carrier-sized chip on his shoulder. If his Othello had not come along in the form of Barack Obama, McCain would have had to invent him, to kick the bastards in the nuts one last time before he shuffles off his mortal coil.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light, Sen. McCain, if it makes you feel better. But know that as you do, the bastards you are fighting are your fellow citizens. And they won’t thank you for it, whichever way things turn out on November 5.
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