Man of Principle?

What happened to John McCain, the principled, non-partisan, maverick politician who drove the Straight Talk Express? I guess he ditched that ride when gas prices hit $4 a gallon. Here are my three biggest issues with John McCain:

1. The utter lies he continues to make about Barack Obama, most notably that Obama will raise taxes on low- and middle-income Americans. According to FactCheck.org, "McCain's new ad puts another stitch in what we've called his pattern of deceit on Obama's tax plan. This one claims Obama and congressional Democrats plan to push forward "painful tax increases on working American families" and that they will bring about "years of deficits," "no balanced budgets" and "billions in new government spending. The ad is plain wrong about higher taxes on working families. In fact, Obama's economic plan would produce a tax cut for the majority of American households, with middle-income earners benefiting most."

2. McCain has been a life-long deregulator of banking and financial institutions as well as a proponent of the trickle-down economic theory. But now that the economy has tanked and everyone is having heart palpatations, McCain is backing away from his beliefs because they aren't politically convenient. According to Wikipedia, "In 1999, McCain voted for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which passed in the Senate by a vote of 54-44. The deregulation bill loosened restrictions on the activities of banks, brokerage houses, and insurance companies. In 2002 he voted for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which passed the Senate without opposition. The Washington Post reported, however, that in 2007 while talking on a conference call to a group of bloggers McCain remarked that he regretted his vote in favor of Sarbanes-Oxley, which strengthened financial reporting requirements for publicly held companies but which has been the subject of complaints from businesses."

3. And alas, his very political choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. As much as I would love to see a female in the #1 or #2 slot in the White House, it is clear why McCain chose Palin. Instead of sticking to his principles and choosing a like-minded running mate (aka his BFF Joe Lieberman), he went the political route and chose someone who he hoped would quiet the more conservative members of his party and pick up some of the disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters. 

I liked the straight-talking McCain better.