This sounds like Arizona Senator John McCain settling old scores. McCain isn’t just unhappy that former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama today, he still sounds extremely angry that Powell endorsed Obama (and not him) in 2008:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) ripped Colin Powell for endorsing President Obama again, saying the former Secretary of State had “harmed” his legacy by doing so.
“General Powell, you disappoint us and you have harmed your legacy even further by defending what is clearly the most feckless foreign policy in my lifetime,” McCain said Thursday on the Kilmeade and Friends radio program.
Powell cited Obama’s foreign policy as one of the reasons for his endorsement. The retired four-star general said he agreed with Obama’s decision to withdraw troops from Iraq, essentially ending the conflict that began during Powell’s tenure in the Bush administration, and argued that Obama had kept the U.S. safe from another terrorist attack.
It’s a bit ironic McCain talking about Colin Powell harming HIS legacy.
Many analysts (including yours truly) and those who voted for him in Republican primaries in 200 (including yours truly) feel McCain threw away his unique role in American politics that he had in 2000 as a special kind of candidate — the original hope for a post-partisan candidate. But McCain tossed that status away (including some of his previous attitudes on immigrants) when he realized he had to be more of a straightforward conservagive party man to get the nomination.
McCain’s virtual abandonment of his own venerable political status was breathtaking and sad but he still has proven to have an independent streak. Plus, the breathlessness many moderates and centrists experienced in watching McCain distance himself from the Old McCain has been trumped (no pun intended) this year by Mitt Romney’s change-on-a-dime position shifts.
Romney hasn’t just triggered breathlessness; watching him gives many moderates and centrists the bends.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.