The Actor

by digby

Kevin Drum links to this post by Mark Schmitt today in which Schmitt artfully deconstructs the McCain myth.

The most important point is this:

[The] whole analysis is based on the cult of authenticity of which McCain, and to a lesser extent Bush, have been the greatest beneficiaries….But as McCain demonstrates, authenticity is itself a pose, one he adopted and has now discarded.

I think it’s cute that so many political journalists don’t understand this. They so want to believe that the glamorous flyboy manly man is the real deal. But, he just originated the stage role that the second rate George Bush played in the TV series. Like all actors, some are better than others.

And that’s the way to get McCain. As Schmitt says:

I assume that McCain’s gamble is that he has so strongly established the “straight-talk express” brand with the general electorate that he can perform the ritual obsequies of the Republican nominating process and still emerge with his reputation intact. But he can’t. [There are] too many Republican activists who simply aren’t going to stomach his nomination, and he can’t spend two years in his current mode and expect the independent moderate voters in New Hampshire and elsewhere to remember what they kind of liked about him for a period in 2000.

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