John McCain is famous for his symbiotic love affair with the national press. McCain plopped his raunchy carpetbag down in Arizona, married up the local liquor heiress and suckered her, her family and their friends into fronting every penny of his campaign for the elected office he felt he was entitled to, as a matter of right, for having been a prisoner of war. From that second forward, the press has slurped his fraudulent milkshake. A candy coated prick for the suckers in the press.

The MSM has fawned over him on the 2000 Straight Talk Express, cavorted at his backyard barbeques, and helped him cover his affairs and corruption. But the bloom may be coming off the faded, old, wrinkly rose. The new Time article from Jay Carney and Michael Scherer really shows how dramatically the relationship between McCain and the press has changed.

That was then:

For years, John McCain’s marathon bull sessions with reporters were more than a means of delivering a message; they were the message. McCain proudly, flagrantly refused direction from handlers, rarely dodged tough questions and considered those who did wimps and frauds. The style told voters that he was unafraid, that he had nothing to hide and that what you see is what you get.

This is now:

But his mood quickly soured. The McCain on display in the 24-minute interview was prickly, at times abrasive, and determined not to stray off message.

Boy howdy; Carney and Scherer weren’t kidding either. Check out this exchange:

TIME: There’s a theme that recurs in your books and your speeches, both about putting country first but also about honor. I wonder if you could define honor for us?

McCAIN: Read it in my books.

TIME: I’ve read your books.
McCAIN: No, I’m not going to define it.

TIME: But honor in politics?
McCAIN: I defined it in five books. Read my books.

McCain is so old, addled, and strung out on Karl Rove inspired message discipline that the closest he can come to any of his so called personal honor is to refer to some self aggrandizing fluffer books. Well, that is sure impressive. Or not. Really not.

But wait! There’s more! From that high point of intellectual discord, McCain goes on to deny the very things he has written in his precious "books" and said in the past. When hit with a direct quote he made in one of his rewritten histories, McCain suddenly claims he is misquoted and taken out of context lo those many years ago.

TIME: Jumping around a bit: in your books, you’ve talked about what it was like to go through the Keating Five experience, and you’ve been quoted as saying it was one of the worst experiences of your life. Someone else quoted you as saying it was even worse than being a POW …

McCAIN: That’s another one of those statements made 17 or 18 years ago which was out of the context of the conversation I was having. Of course the worst, the toughest experience of my life was being imprisoned, so people can pluck phrases from 17 or 18 years ago …

John McCain has always been an angry, mercurial, petulant and self serving man who believes that John McCain is entitled to say, do and take whatever John McCain wants and John McCain needs. In this regard, he has no honor, and no shame. Those of us native to Arizona, where we recognize a big prick when we see one, have always seen and known this about McCain, but when he is slipping so bad that he can no longer snow the national media, who he has affectionately, and truthfully, called "my base"; you have to wonder just how badly McCain’s faculties have, in fact, slipped.

With all the mistakes, lapses, confusion, and now this; is it a sign that McCain really is suffering from diminished capacity? Is this something the American public should know about? It very well may be. A friend of the blog that happens to be a psychiatrist, emailed the following:

Folks trying to cover for cognitive impairment will often use a very rigid response pattern. For people like McCain with pre-existing labile mood, the problem with this strategy is that the conflict it creates can easily elicit the mood lablity: hence the prickliness.

Maybe the national media should start asking some of these questions, the American public has a right to know. You have to read the full article, but it really shows McCain for what he is – a thuggish, surly, angry old man who is all ambition and no honor. Who’d a thunk it? Anybody who knows McCain, that’s who.

UPDATE: Is the Bush/Cheney clan so desperate to get another Republican, McCain, in the White House to succeed them (sure might come in handy to put an end to all the talk of investigations into criminal behavior that have been proposed by an Obama administration) that they are willing to start a mini-war to improve the odds? Turns out DFH bloggers are not the only ones thinking this might be possible. (h/t Noonan in comments) CNN is reporting that Vladimir Putin thinks so:

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of orchestrating the conflict in Georgia to benefit one of its presidential election candidates.

In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Matthew Chance in the Black Sea city of Sochi Thursday, Putin said the U.S. had encouraged Georgia to attack the autonomous region of South Ossetia.

Putin told CNN his defense officials had told him it was done to benefit a presidential candidate — Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are competing to succeed George W. Bush — although he presented no evidence to back it up.

"U.S. citizens were indeed in the area in conflict," Putin said. "They were acting in implementing those orders doing as they were ordered, and the only one who can give such orders is their leader.

Well, it is safe to say that the Republicans have no compunction about using false war to put a mental incompetent in the White House. Pooty Poot thinks they are doing it again. Who knows, but he sure doesn’t have any less credibility that Bush, Cheney and Rove now does he?