Gloss

I’m surprised by the sincerity of everyone’s shock at the GOP campaign and the idea that John McCain has lost his integrity by going after the Bill Ayers connection or crying Socialism. This is classic failure to empathize. The “dirty tricks” are an extension of conservative free-market ideology. A politician, like any business in competition, has to take any opportunity presented to him. Whether McCain’s moves are ethical or his arguments are consistent is not for him to decide. That’s a job for the invisible hand.

In the free market code, any holding back from personal attacks would not seen as virtuous restraint, but as moral failing. John McCain’s fight has been the good fight.

If his attacks have seemed half-hearted or have failed to connect, that does not mean the electorate is tired of smear tactics. Like Greenspan’s crisis of faith and the market collapse, it’s another outward sign that the free market, and the Republican party, is dead.