In a move that would be more befitting of his opposing candidate-in-waiting Hillary Clinton, over the weekend, John McCain recognized Barack Obama as an "absolutely" qualified candidate for the Presidency. In light of Obama's recent exaggerations of McCain's unfortunate comparison between Iraq and U.S. occupation of Korea and Germany, this is a pretty considerable act of humility on McCain's part. It's a strange thing to live in a country where a candidate can admit that his own enemy is capable of the same job he's running for, but said good guy's own competition is still hesitant to admit his competency. Hopefully Senator Clinton's recent removal of chief campaign strategist Mark Penn will encourage her to make similar steps in rebuilding the bridges she's repeatedly torched with Barack this year.
Although I'd vowed to stray from the path of the cynic in the contents of this blog, I have to admit that this is a little suspect. Is McCain only giving Obama his due credit in a thinly-veiled attempt to improve his own likability among voters? As soon as Obama is confirmed as the Democratic Candidate, will the McCain campaign resort to business as usual? It's hard to imagine that old man McCain will make strides to stay out of the political mud once he's head to head with Democratic do-gooder Obama, but at least this is a fine place to start drawing the terms of a fair fight. John McCain, even if you don't have my vote, for acknowledging the blatantly obvious qualifications of the most-electable presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan (maybe Kennedy), you have earned my respect.
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