No one campaigns sleazier than a Bush. The fact that the family maintains plausible deniability to distance itself from the sleaze it peddles on their opponents only makes them more, not less slimy. McCain’s sleaziness is unique only insofar as he seems to have an extraordinary ability to believe that he is hewing to some imaginary code of honor while engaging in dirty, illegitimate attacks that he would righteously denounce were they launched against him.
I think what makes McCain’s campaign seem so unprecedentedly disgusting is that McCain and his fluffers in the press corps spent a great deal of time telling us what an above-board, honorable dude he was, all concerned about country and history and tradition and the flag and such. His whole appeal was predicated on being A Good Guy.
Whereas everybody kind of knew Bush was a lazy, fratty asshole. Even when people loved him, they loved him not for his sense of honor or his integrity but for his aggression, his certainty, and his stupidity, or in the parlance of Tweety and his ilk, his common touch. Even the most enthusiastic asslickers never held him up as some kind of icon of decency. There was no illusion there to shatter.
A.