John McCain is a diplomatic disaster just begging to happen. A more generous observer than I might excuse his frequent factual gaffes - repeated references to countries and borders that don't exist, forgetting that Sunni al-Qaeda and Shiite Iran are sworn enemies, putting events such as Iraq's "Anbar Awakening" and the US military "surge" in the wrong chronological order - as the normal mental slippage anyone might experience while they near their twilight years. What cannot be so easily overlooked are those comments and actions of McCain's which suggest that he really is a rather angry and hateful old man, not to mention something of a loose cannon on the deck.

Take for example his efforts at humor involving the fantasized slaughter of Iranian civilians: His singing of "bomb, bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann" back during the primaries and his more recent suggestion that exporting cigarettes to the Iranians might be a good way of killing them, neither of which should be coming out of the mouth of a prospective president. Following the "bomb, bomb Iran" incident McCain's lack of tact was made even more painfully obvious when he callously refused to admit any error in offending the Iranian people by suggesting that they would be better off dead. Whatever we might think of Iran's rulers, the Iranian people are not our enemies, and making jokes about killing them with bombs and cigarettes is no way to win "hearts and minds" in the Middle East or anywhere else.

McCain's remarks about killing Iranians echo previous comments made by him regarding the people of Vietnam. "I hate the gooks," McCain told reporters during his 2000 primary campaign, "I will hate them as long as I live." However rooted these comments may be in McCain's own war experiences, and however excusable they may be for any private citizen likewise scarred by war, they simply cannot be overlooked in a prospective president: the stakes are too high, the need too critical for a competent Diplomat-in-Chief in the Oval Office. Taken in the context of his later remarks about killing Iranians, they would also seem to suggest a fairly callous and cold-blooded attitude on McCain's part toward peoples he regards as enemies. Made once - and on the basis of such deep-seated hostility as that McCain appears to harbor toward certain peoples of the earth - such remarks may all too easily be made again, and again, and again.

Then we have the matter of McCain's infamous temper, such as when he reacted to disagreement on immigration reform from fellow Republican senator John Cornyn of Texas by screaming, "F*ck you!"; such as when he called fellow Republican senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico an "a**hole"; and such as when he called fellow Republican senator Charles Grassley of Iowa a "f*cking jerk." Keep in mind that these incidents occured, not in private or among political enemies, but on the floor of the United States Senate among fellow Republicans; and could therefore just as easily happen, say, at a G-8 Summit or a gathering of NATO leaders. How would it look on the world stage for a red-faced, whited-haired John McCain first to get all the countries wrong, then to make jokes about bombing one of them, then finally to blow his stack and call one of their presidents a "f*cking jerk"?

Indeed McCain's outbursts and insults have already, on occasion, occured before the eyes not only of America but of the world. His hatred of "gooks" and his desire to kill Iranians have both been widely noted in the world press, and would likely precede him on any presidential tour of Asia or the Middle East. While our French allies were fighting alongside US troops in Afghanistan, McCain had the following to say: "You know, the French remind me a little bit of an aging actress of the 1940s who is still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it" - not only insulting, but irrelevant, and quite possibly a reason for pro-American French president Nicholas Sarkozy's enthusiastic endorsement of Barack Obama. Once in a 1987 meeting at the height of Central American tensions, according to fellow Republican senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, McCain reached across the table and physically assaulted a Nicaraguan representative, seizing him by his shirt collar. "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine...," Cochran later said when endorsing Mitt Romney for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, "...He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

If McCain worries even his fellow Republicans, then how worried should the rest of us be? 

There was a time when I honestly believed that John McCain might actually hold true to his promise to wage a clean and respectable campaign against Barack Obama for the high office of President of the United States. There was a time when I bore McCain no personal enmity despite my political allegiance to his opponent. Perhaps this is only because I didn't know as much about McCain as I know now; perhaps I had been told about McCain's "maverick" status so many times by the media that I actually believed it; perhaps I hoped that McCain's experience with Bush-Rove tactics in 2000 would prevent him on moral grounds from employing the same tactics in 2008. Whatever the case, that time has now passed.

John McCain is attempting to win the White House by dragging the 2008 presidential election into the same pit of Rovian filth that won for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. McCain is running a campaign based, not on issues and ideas, but on cheap shots and negative personal innuendo. Clearly unable to compete intellectually with Obama, McCain has deliberately sought to lower the level of discourse in this contest to that of the locker room and the back-alley brawl. While Obama strives to maintain the high ground, McCain wallows in sewage and asks the rest of us to join him. If this general election contest has taken a hard negative turn of late, it is entirely McCain's doing. It didn't have to be this way.

John McCain deserves no mercy from Democrats. He deserves no respect, no personal or professional consideration, no hero treatment. He deserves to be hit hard, again and again and again, until there's nothing left of his campaign but a bloodied corpse. He deserves to have every personal failing drawn out for all to see, every bit of dirty laundry from the McCain past taken out and waved before the cameras, every skeleton exumed. He deserves to be pummeled by Obama in the upcoming presidential debates until he is reduced to a helpless, quivering blob of hairy cottage cheese. He deserves to have his infamous temper provoked, and to be baited into making a public ass of himself just as he has done so many times before. He deserves all this, and more - much, much more. If in the end his Senate career is destroyed along with his presidential bid, so much the better.

When John McCain tells Americans that he has always been a passionate supporter of civil rights, Americans need to be reminded that McCain voted against the federal Martin Luther King (MLK) holiday in 1983, that he supported a Republican governor who rescinded Arizona's state MLK holiday in 1987, that he voted to eliminate federal funding for the MLK Federal Holiday Commission in 1994, and that he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1990 no less than four times. Only days ago, however, McCain claimed to "have  supported hundreds of pieces of legislation which would help Americans obtain an equal opportunity" and to have been instrumental in "fighting for the recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday in my state." John McCain is a liar.

When John McCain tries to convince Americans that he has always been right on the war in Iraq, Americans need to be reminded that back in 2003 McCain told us victory would be achieved easily and quickly, and that US troops would be greeted in Iraq as liberators. When John McCain tells Americans that he is a reformer, Americans need to be reminded of his role in the "Keating Five" scandal, of his more recent improprieties as a member of the Senate Commerce Committee with corporate telecom lobbyists, and indeed of the fact that his campaign is entirely run by lobbyists. When John McCain talks about "family values," Americans need to be reminded how he flip-flopped on Jerry Falwell, calling the late religious bigot an "agent of intolerance" one day and then kissing Falwell's fat, hairy behind the next. When John McCain talks about the "sanctity of marriage," Americans need to be reminded how McCain shamelessly dumped his own first wife, following her crippling injury in a car crash, in favor of the younger, prettier, and much richer woman who bankrolled his entry into politics and to whom he is married today. John McCain is a hypocrite.

While I am pleased that the Obama campaign has begun to hit back against the McCain attack machine, I also understand Obama's need to hold the high ground and not allow himself to be dragged into the same cesspool McCain occupies. This, alas, is the difficult balance Obama must maintain if he is to win. Thankfully, the rest of us have no such tightrope to walk, and no such need to go easy on one bitter old gas-bag who needs to be put out of his misery and ours. For Democratic leaders in Washington, for local Democratic activists, and for Democratic bloggers, the time has come to start taking John McCain apart.

For weeks now John McCain and his campaign have been grumbling that the media pay far too much attention to globetrotting elitist Barack Obama and far too little attention to hometown hero McCain. With McCain's apparent shift now to a campaign strategy based on nothing but negativity, it would seem that the Unhappy Warrior is finally getting the attention he deserves.

McCain's latest series of petty attack ads and whining complaints against Obama have drawn jeers and expressions of disappointment even from McCain's supporters. Most embarrassing to Republicans was the McCain ad comparing "celebrity" Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, described by former McCain strategist John Weaver earlier this week as "childish." Time columnist and former McCain admirer Joe Klein likewise expressed disappointment at McCain's negative new line of attack: "A few months ago, I wrote that John McCain was an honorable man and he would run an honorable campaign...," Klein wrote Thursday, "...I was wrong." The same day, ABC News suggested that in going so overwhelmingly negative McCain risks caricaturing himself as an "angry, bitter old man." Meanwhile, the New York Times charged that McCain has now dropped any "straight talk" he may once have offered voters in favor of a ride on the "Low-Road Express":

"In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has been waving the flag of fear (Senator Barack Obama wants to "lose" in Iraq), and issuing attacks that are sophomoric (suggesting that Mr. Obama is a socialist) and false (the presumptive Democratic nominee turned his back on wounded soldiers).... Many voters are wondering whether a McCain presidency would be an extension of Mr. Bush’s two disastrous terms. If the way Mr. McCain is running his campaign these days is an indication, Americans don't have to wait until next January for the answer to that one."

Quickly following McCain's "celebrity" ad came the charge that Obama was playing the race card against McCain, apparently based on the fact that Obama occasionally mentions the challenges of being the first African American with a real shot at winning the presidency - a charge from the McCain camp that Eugene Robinson describes in today's Washington Post as nothing more than a piece of "snarling, mean-spirited nonsense":

"Of course the McCain campaign isn't really offended that the first black major-party candidate for president in American history might mention this distinction from time to time. The idea is to slow Obama down before he runs away with this thing, and the weapon of choice is handfuls of mud.... Remember St. John the Reformer, who promised a high-minded campaign and said he wouldn't question his opponent's patriotism? Clearly, he's been replaced by an evil twin. The switch seems to have taken place during his opponent's world tour, when Obama's prescriptions for Iraq and Afghanistan began to look prescient -- and McCain's began to look irrelevant."

Here, McCain seems to have completely forgotten his own previous opportunistic praise for Hillary Clinton's run as America's first potential female major-party presidential candidate - an attempt to pick off Clinton supporters at Obama's expense that by McCain's new standards would make him just as guilty of playing the gender card as he now says Obama is of playing the race card (one might also recall those numerous recent instances in which McCain has played the age card, the I'm-more-American-than-you card, and the tortured POW card). Also in today's Washington Post, E.J. Dionne berates McCain for running precisely the same type of campaign George W. Bush and Karl Rove ran against McCain himself in the 2000 Republican primaries:

"...It's hard to imagine the American electorate buying McCain's new advertising effort to undermine Obama by accusing him of being a "celebrity" and comparing him -- OMG! -- to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. McCain has made matters worse by falsely accusing Obama of wanting to raise taxes on electricity and by offering a phony account of why Obama decided not to visit wounded American soldiers in Europe.... By running an attack campaign that is almost a parody of George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 exertions, McCain is chucking away his greatest opportunity, which is to show that he could reform Republicanism and offer voters an alternative way of breaking with a past they have come to loathe.... Voters are in a mood to give the status quo a swift kick. Instead of offering puerile ads trashing Obama, McCain should show how he'd be the change we've been waiting for."

Be careful what you wish for, John: You just might get it, and you just might deserve it.