I’m not going to lie: To a long-time McCain supporter, it must seem almost ridiculous that he would have to directly declare his separation from the man whom Garrison Keillor, saint that he is, will only refer to as the Current Occupant. In the 2000 primary election, John McCain and his then-famous, now-defunct Straight Talk Express stood for everything that could potentially be considered right, by which I mean correct, within the Republican Party. Yet it has become quite necessary because the John McCain of today bears little resemblance to that candidate from 2000.

The Arizona senator, at that time at least, was quite true to his “maverick” image. He was against Bush’s tax cuts, and he was against repealing Roe v. Wade. After he lost the primary due mostly to a series of shockingly underhanded smears, McCain continued to support issues that tended to be primarily against the Republican base. Even as someone who would probably be judged an extreme liberal, I doubt that I have ever felt prouder for my country than when the then-courageous John McCain stood up to that Current Occupant and wrote a bill for an unqualified condemnation of torture.

Naturally, an accompanying low point in my national pride was the debate which followed. Shouldn’t this be a common sense issue? Do the fundamental human rights which we claim to support suddenly become extinguished when the human in question is no longer a citizen of the United States? John McCain held his position with grace, dignity and a fiery reservation that indicated that he quite knew that he was in the right.

As I have said, I am an unreserved liberal. Yet, McCain’s leadership at this time two years ago was so exemplary that I wrote many of my college admittance essays around the philosophical importance of the stand which he took against torture. If I would have been asked to name my favorite figure in the Senate two years ago, the answer would have come quite readily and easily: John McCain, who seemed to epitomize everything that was right (little though there was!) about American politics.

How much two years can change things. I’m quite sure that I would ultimately still be voting for Obama even if the John McCain of two years ago were still running for president. But my choice would be immensely more difficult. Fortunately for Obama, the once honorable “maverick” has been dead for at least two years.

We should have known that this was a problem when John McCain hired the very same people who had so shamelessly smeared him in North Carolina in 2000 to run his campaign. We should have realized the issue when McCain, a former opponent of the “agents of [religious] intolerance” on both the right and the left, gave a graduation address at Jerry Falwell’s “Liberty” University. Alarms should have been raised when McCain, a once valiant supporter of immigration rights, suddenly declared that he would not even vote for his own Senate bill on immigration.

Think John Kerry was a flip-flopper? This John makes Kerry look positively rigid.

Now, in such a time as Americans are in today, any Republican candidate is bound to face long odds. That’s just the way politics works. And it also helps that the Democrats, after eight (very) long years of political impotency, have finally found a vivacious candidate who exudes both optimism and a wonderful doctrine, who can appeal to the blue half of the nation, but also to a surprisingly large portion of the red states.

But if anyone is truly to blame for the massive deficit which John McCain has been seeing in the polls lately, the answer can be none other than John McCain. The man whom I once admired, whom I held up as a politician who earned my respect via his fundamental decency, though I might not always agree with him, has turned his back on everything for which he once stood.

It’s really quite ironic that John McCain is suddenly owning up to his maverick image so completely, because there’s never been a point in his history when he’s more completely abandoned it.

The John McCain of eight years ago, or even two years ago, is dead and gone. The final nail in the coffin should have been his nomination of Sarah Palin, a choice of a fiendishly partisan nature. But I suppose we needed the “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” language of the economic meltdown to really drive everything home.

With a scant two weeks left until the election, there is little doubt in my mind that Barack Obama will win the presidency, and for that I am truly glad. But I quite honestly wish that his opponent had not helped him out so much. John McCain used to be that rarest of figures, the Washington politician who you could disagree with but still respect; however, this is true no longer.

If anything should be an indication of just how bad our electoral process has become in the last 50 years, I can think of no better symbol than the tragic metamorphosis of John McCain. The “maverick” used to be right, but now he’s just right-wing.