To the editor:

Once upon a time John McCain had the honor he claims for himself. He opposed torture and the influence of lobbyists in government.

Then a funny thing happened. He abandoned those principles to win the Republican nomination for president.

But the hardcore base was still suspicious of him, so he chose as his running mate an ultraconservative beauty queen who was a small town mayor before she became governor of Alaska, who claims foreign policy experience because “when Putin rears his head” it’s in Alaska air space, and who magnanimously distributes the revenues from Alaska’s oil profits to the people of that state.

This choice helped McCain until we noticed that her flawless face hides the steamroller mind of a fanatic. She’s like a parody of Hillary Clinton: not strong, only loud; not intelligent, only opinionated; super confident, but not competent, except in one area.

She can stir up mobs to shout “traitor,” and “kill him!” about Barack Obama.

At first, McCain left the fear mongering to her, but now he has joined her, on the stump and in robocalls to voters. One caller says, “You need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home, and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington.”

In these last desperate days, when the polls show that he is losing, McCain has drowned his honor in a shallow cup.

Ann Adams

Oak Harbor