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I’ll admit it, I’m a John McCain fan. Well maybe I should rephrase that; I used to be a John McCain fan. In 2000 he captured my attention with his “Straight Talk Express” and willingness to speak the truth about the problems in Washington D.C. and with our country. Unfortunately for the senator from Arizona, he ran into the Bush “compassionate conservative” buzzsaw during the 2000 primary season and was decimated when the campaign trail wound through the christofacist South. Jerry Falwell said nasty things about the senator and that was just about the best endorsement I would ever need.

He drank the Bush Kool-Aid in 2004 and sat back as party leaders tasked him to help the President get re-elected - and by doing so set himself up as the heir apparent for 2008. McCain followed their advice, spurned his friend (and fellow Vietnam veteran) John Kerry and touted the Bush doctrine in the Middle East. I had no difficulty in 2004 agreeing with McCain’s approach. His endorsement of Bush in the race against Kerry was important, but not overly enthusiastic. He made a few appearances with the President where it was necessary, but he in no way carried Bush’s proxy. He was still a sovereign voice and wisely using his clout in exchange for future consideration.

His work in the Senate has remained some of the least self-serving and most statesmanlike. Campaign finance reform, strong opposition to torture, organizing the middle of the road Gang of 14 compromise - did not endear him with Republican conservatives; and on the other side of the aisle, his steadfast support for winning the war in Iraq has alienated many Democrats who once considered him worthy enough to cross party lines and cast a McCain vote. All of these actions demonstrated his independence and I marveled at his conviction of conscience to stand his ground.

But something has happened to John McCain.

It began last year at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference when he announced to supporters for the event’s presidential straw poll, “write-in President Bush” in place of his own name. While this may have been more a political shenanigan to rescue an almost certain loss to hometown favorite Bill Frist, it marked a strange change of direction in what had always been McCain’s straight talk approach. The SRLC event was an opportunity for McCain to distance himself from the President and maintain his maverick status, but he instead chose to do the exact opposite.

Since that time, the McCain movement has been less express and more repress. He starts then stops then starts, and it seems like each new start is accompanied by a turn that takes him further to the right. He and Jerry Falwell are pals. He was a strong supporter of arch-conservative former Ohio gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell and now he’s leaning toward a gay marriage ban (a position he once rallied against).

I recognize that all of this new behavior is designed to move him to the right and make him more attractive to the Republican base. He must please the far right if he hopes to earn the party’s nomination, but it’s not the John McCain I thought I knew.

And I don’t think it’s the John McCain that looks back at him from the mirror in the morning. For the first time since I’ve followed his career, I don’t think John McCain is comfortable in his own skin. He’s bought the consultant’s script and it’s stifled the McCain that America loves. It’s something you often see in candidates when they get larger than life - it happened in 2000 to Al Gore and it’s what Joe Klein calls an “inconvenient truth” (not the Gore movie) of politics in his book ‘Politics Lost‘.

McCain’s leap then hesitate litany was on display last night as he “soft announced” his candidacy for president on ‘Late Night with David Letterman’. The obvious scripting of the show and the interview smelled so much of a set-up that it betrayed the disaster of the new McCain. The stop and start pattern couldn’t have been more evident, when he quickly followed his ‘announcement’ with a caveat that the ‘official’ announcement will take place in April. No honesty, no realism, just scripted fluff. Even the once glib off the cuff McCain was replaced by a forced repartee infused with campaign-trail tested one liners (all of which I and I assume many other folks have heard from him before).

I miss John McCain and if he wins the Republican nomination, maybe he should consider doing so under an assumed name.