Unsurprisingly for readers or anyone who knows me personally, I will be voting for Barack Obama tomorrow.  Thanks to the Electoral College, my vote will be meaningless, but I believe it's a moral imperative.  Beyond policy issues, which reasonable people can and do disagree about, there's a question of character.  People have pointed to many different moments as to why the John McCain of 2008 doesn't much resemble the John McCain of 2000, mostly the appointment of Sarah Palin and the hiring of campagin manager Steve Schmidt, but really it came in the Fall of 2006, during the debate over the Military Commissions Act.  The one that suspended habeus corpus and legalized torture.  For a full refresher see this NYT Editorial written at the time.

John McCain, a former prisoner of war and victim of brutal torture, made a bold, courageous stand.  With fellow moderate Republican Arlen Specter and a few others, they declared to their own party that certain things were simply not acceptable.  Now, I run in pretty liberal circles, and other, more cynical people told me that it was a charade and when the chips were down, they'd vote for the bill.  But I didn't believe it.  Perhaps Specter, or Chafee, or Snowe, but not John McCain.

It was the last time I'd ever give him the benefit of the doubt.  I don't know what George Bush offered him in the 'negotiations' that convinced him to switch his support to the bill, probably donor lists, contacts, and other institutional support in the 2008 primary.  We do know he did get them shortly afterwards, specifically the list of Bush's "Rangers", his best fundraising bundlers. 

In 2000, John McCain ran an honorable campaign, and was beaten by dirty tricks, specifically a whisper campaign in South Carolina that his adopted child was his illegitimate black baby.  It was a horrible smear tactic, but it taught McCain the wrong lessons.  It seems like a hard decision, but after publically endorsing torture for the party's support, his later decisions must have been more swallowable.  Down in the polls in 2008, he hired the architect of that campaign to work for him:

"When then-Gov. Bush called upon Eskew, Tompkins and Rhodes to help him during the Florida recount, a senior McCain adviser told me that "when the going gets tough for Governor Bush, he turns to the darker side of our party. We saw that in South Carolina, and we see that today."

Eight years later, with a tough fight of his own, McCain has turned to one of the same men. Asked if the McCain campaign would have a comment about hiring one of the South Carolina strategists the senator and his 2000 campaign team once held responsible for smears against him, McCain 2008 spokesman Brian Rogers emailed, "No.""

He sold his principles, and the last thing America should do is reward that level of cynicism and mistrust of the public.  Don't prove Tucker Eskew right.