watching John McCain speak to a crowd of students just days before that state's primary election.

George Bush the lesser's slimy forces were slithering all over the state, smearing McCain with robocalls; hinting that he had fathered a black child (he has an adopted girl from Bangladesh). Incredibly, they were telling voters that the tortured war hero wasn't as tough as the pampered draft dodger, and enough of the idiots believed it.

John McCain learned something from that experience, or thought he did. Unfortunately, the lesson he seems to have taken away from it was this: If you want to be president, you need to forget about integrity and sell your soul.

This year, he has appealed to the ignorant, the repellent, the incompetent and the racist. He picked a vice presidential candidate who virtually every thinking conservative from George Will to David Brooks now says has no business being on any national ticket.