About McCain's run at the presidency, Kevin Drum writes:

I have a lot of reasons for wishing that liberals would stop falling for McCain's "straight talk" schtick, and this is one of them: even on the issues where he's one of the good guys, he caves in too often to have much of an impact. His ambition to be president is palpable in everything he does, and it's what's responsible for his routine compromises on issues he supposedly considers matters of honor, his cozying up to George Bush whenever it's politically convenient, and his bizarre recent temper tantrum against Barack Obama. He's certainly mastered the art of sounding reasonable, but it's only an inch deep. Underneath, he's just a standard issue right wing politician.

He brings up a good point, the two faces of McCain. Is he the much more reasonable than BushCo type GOP candidate that dances with GW strictly to win over his party's backing (learning from his 2000 experience)? Or is he truly deep-down just another stalwart, crazed right-wing nut that is disingenuously hoisting support for issues like global warming and anti-torture to appear less crackpot-ish than BushCo?

I've been leaning to the former, assuming any cozy overtures to Bush were simply out of political necessity to win top-billing in '08, hitch-free. But who knows? Much of my benefit of the doubt granting could be due to just wishing a GOP candidate didn't have to be of the Bush/Cheney/DeLay/Frist mold. I expect to learn much more as the heat is turned up in the next two years.