I was young when John McCain first ran for president, so I don't remember much of his "straight talk", but the impression I gathered was one of a principled man willing to rise above the political dog-and-pony show for the sake of his country.

However, lately, I've been hearing things from McCain which have bothered me. I've heard of him paying more lip service to the religious right, and just recently about this little bit while he was on the O'Reilly factor. During the interview, Bill O'Reilly astounds with his bigotry on the issue of immigration, and McCain aquiesces. Here's the excerpt:

O'REILLY: Now on the left. The objection is there's not enough illegal aliens in here. The New York Times wants open borders. They want all the 12 million legal people who will be legalized to bring in their extended families. Not just wives and children, but moms and dads, brothers and sisters.

This would lead to in my calculation 40 and 50 foreign nationals being absorbed into the United States in the next 12, 13 years. That would sink the Republican Party, I believe, because we'd have a one-party system. And change, pardon the pun, the whole complexion of America. Am I wrong?

MCCAIN: No, you're right. The second thing that are on the left they're against is the temporary worker, as you know. We say two years go back for a year, two years, go back for a year. They don't want that. They don't want them to have to go back.

O'REILLY: But the strategy is…

MCCAIN: People can come and work.

O'REILLY: Do you understand — and I'm not saying this in a condescending way, you're smarter than I am.

MCCAIN: Sure.

O'REILLY: But do you understand…

MCCAIN: No.

O'REILLY: …what The New York Times wants and the far-left want? They want to breakdown the white Christian male power structure of which you are a part, and so am I. And they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically breakdown the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say that you've got to cap it with a number.

MCCAIN: In America today, we have a very strong economy, low unemployment. So we need additional farm workers, including by the way, agriculture. But there may come a time where we have an economic downturn and we don't need so many.

While McCain doesn't support O'Reilly's most outrageous statement, he does not correct him either. I imagine McCain doesn't want to alienate the conservative audience O'Reilly commands. When watching the video, McCain's submissive tone is especially pronounced, and it is pitiful to watch.

I could also see some of this equivocatory stance in his latest appearance on the Daily Show. I was glad to hear McCain say that, if he were elected, he would, to paraphrase "get rid of Guantanamo, and never torture anyone on American soil again." However, I noticed that he didn't take a very strong stance on anything else but this one thing which you could be certain the Daily Show's audience would love. When Jon Stewart said that he wanted to see the "old John McCain," the Arizona senator replied with a very ineffectual "you will." It certainly seems as if McCain is playing the Politician Suck-Up Game.

What is sad about this, is that I believe that McCain is still a principled person with strong ideas with what he wants to do to make the United States a better nation. However, the fire to maintain that unabashed honesty has gone out of him. After years of suffering this loyalty-obsessed administration, personal attacks during his last run for President and other such pressures, he seems to have finally given in to politics as usual. I imagine that every politician has to sell a little bit of their soul and make some compromises in order to gain power and make the changes that matter, but it is always sad to see a little more of that soul slip away. And when enough of it goes, even an elected leader is so endebted to special interests and lobbies that their power is as nothing. Now, it may be that McCain always was a far more manipulative person than I anticipated, and that his "straight talk" was nothing but a show. I can't tell. But what I see here is still sad. I certainly hope that McCain hasn't completely given in to the political pressure put forth by his party.

What I also find sad, aside from McCain's decline, is O'Reilly's statement that "[t]hey want to breakdown the white Christian male power structure of which you are a part, and so am I," as if Christian male dominance were a good thing. At least, however, he's honest, and has confirmed what I suspect many conservatives actually have on their mind instead of liberty and justice. From here, I can denounce them.