Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

This is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.

In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.

-- TIM DICKINSON

The only thing worse than a sore loser, is a person who's sore even before they lose.

-- TA-NEHISI COATES

Watch Kristol forget that he just told McCain to take credit for getting the bill passed; watch McCain and Palin claim to have killed it on behalf of the outraged taxpayers. However low you bend, you won’t find a standard of truthfulness with this ticket and its backers. The Kristol Plan is the triumph of tactics over everything. It takes years and years spent writing propaganda to achieve that kind of purity.

Meanwhile, it’s left to a relatively young black man, charged by his opponents with being a radical, a liberal, a community organizer, a Muslim, and the anti-Christ, to save the establishment on Wall Street and in Washington.

-- GEORGE PACKER

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The lesson of the last eight years is this: when power is a passport to gamble, people can end up seriously broke or seriously dead.

-- ROGER COHEN

The picture is this: Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the [Republican] party line will be silenced. That doesn't sound American to me, but Stalin would approve.

-- KATHLEEN PARKER

I think the GOP ticket in 2012 will be Romney/Pawlenty. Romney will brand himself as the new conservative standard bearer in the mold of Reagan and he’ll use the “Sam’s Club Conservative” line that Pawlenty pioneered to win the nomination. Also, he’ll try to frame Obama as an out-of-touch Jimmy Carter liberal who doesn’t understand the needs of the common folk.

You heard it here first.

-- JUSTIN GARDNER

Illustration for Rolling Stone by Robert Grossman