It's not that simple

"McCain would be an outstanding president. In government, he has almost always had an instinct for the right cause. He has become an experienced legislative craftsman. He is stalwart against the country’s foes and cooperative with its friends. But he never escaped the straightjacket of a party that is ailing and a conservatism that is behind the times. And that’s what makes the final weeks of this campaign so unspeakably sad."

That's the kind of conclusion that makes you want to dunk David Brooks in a cold pool.  The guy has a thing about complexity:  avoid it at all costs.  He wants to break the world down into manageable chunks (chunks that he can manage, anyway), label them, and take it from there.  This morning he's decided there are "really" three parties in America -- Dems, Republicans, and the middle.  McCain represents the middle.

"McCain shares the progressive conservative instinct. He has shown his sympathy with the striving immigrant and his disgust with the colluding corporatist. He has an untiring reform impulse and a devotion to national service and American exceptionalism.

"His campaign seemed the perfect vehicle to explain how this old approach applied to a new century with new problems — a century with widening inequality, declining human capital, a fraying social contract, rising entitlement debt, corporate authoritarian regimes abroad and soft corporatist collusion at home."

So lets get a little less unequal, impose a few cosmetic changes on corporatists, and make sure the fraying social contract doesn't take too much time way from our expensive tastes.

Why can't we handle the fact that, within America alone, there are enough "parties" and ideologies to last scholars whole lifetimes of analysis?  Go ahead:  believe the earth is flat and some god talks directly to you.  Just don't break the law.  Just don't challenge the overriding law that makes us all equal and entitled to equal treatment by the law, by the government, and by each other. 

McCain has run an insubstantial and mean campaign.  He doesn't so much represent the ideology of George W. Bush as he does the reckless, thoughtless and destructive character of the Bush presidency.  The very advisors who created George W. Bush's presidency were put in charge of McCain's campaign -- by McCain. 

But it isn't as though McCain was some poor, nice guy who was ruined by his party.  McCain always made his own choices; he was driven by his own demons.  McCain has played dirty at times throughout his life.  His personal history has one or two high points which his supporters tend to play up.  He doesn't have the temperament or character to be a great leader.  Period.