Here's EJ Dionne on John McCain's acceptance speech last night (not to mention his entire campaign):

Elegy for a Maverick

By E. J. Dionne Jr. / Friday, September 5, 2008; A21

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Once upon a time, John McCain promised to be a different kind of politician and a different kind of Republican. He was about straight talk, reform and nonpartisanship, a resolute foe of the slashing politics of the slaughterhouse.

McCain tried to get voters to remember that man in his acceptance speech last night, the one who "worked with members of both parties to fix the problems that need to be fixed." But that man has disappeared.

The stage in the middle of the cavernous Xcel Energy Center was rearranged so McCain could conjure the feel of the town hall meetings he loves as he laced into "partisan rancor" and "the Washington crowd." Yet a set change could not disguise the fact that this convention -- including the big speech Wednesday by his running mate, Sarah Palin -- dripped with divisive ridicule as speaker after speaker worked to aggravate the country's cultural schisms and replay worn-out harangues against weak liberals.

The Republican crowd here has gleefully played into the worst stereotypes of their party as a privileged class resistant to change.

When Rudy Giuliani referred to Barack Obama's past as a "community organizer" Wednesday, the crowd broke into ugly, patronizing laughter. These, presumably, are people who never needed a neighborhood advocate. Imagine if Democrats ever reacted that way to someone who worked as an entrepreneur or a church leader.

And it's unlikely that even a convention of the American Petroleum Institute would erupt into raucous chants of "drill, baby, drill!"

McCain could not change his party, so he changed himself. McCain has pandered to a Republican right wing he once disdained on issue after issue, from oil drilling to immigration to tax cuts for the wealthy.

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