Bereft of straight talk

Friday, Sept. 5, 2008 | 2:09 a.m.

On Thursday night John McCain, as he accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, talked about ending the “constant partisan rancor” in Washington.

McCain was talking a good game of ending nasty partisanship, but the record tells a different story. For starters, McCain has voted with President Bush’s policies more than 90 percent of the time — and this president has been the master of brass-knuckles partisanship.

McCain also has surrounded himself with handlers who worked on George W. Bush’s campaigns. It’s not a surprise, then, that the right-wing wedge politics that Bush perfected, and which worked to divide this country even more during the first eight years of this century, are with us again.

Well before the parties held their national political conventions, the McCain campaign launched relentless negative ads against the head of the Democratic ticket, Barack Obama.

McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is yet more proof of the politics of division. Despite her ability to energize the base at the convention, who out there really believes that Palin is the most qualified individual — man or woman — to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

Although Palin is said to have battled the Republican establishment in Alaska, she is hardly the reformer McCain touts her as. After all, while she now says she is against the infamous piece of pork in Alaska known as the “Bridge to Nowhere,” when she ran for governor in 2006 she supported it. When it was clear it was going nowhere, she flip-flopped and opposed it.

The American people deserve better than a cynical presidential campaign, a win-at-all-cost strategy. There are too many important issues that deserve a serious debate: the economy, national security, education, health care, energy and the environment, to begin with.

The presidential ticket that truly engages in straight talk, while offering the right ideas to get this country back on track, is the one that Americans are yearning for. The next two months will tell which, if either, party fills that bill.