The Fall of Chameleon

What we've seen this summer is a great man watching his great dream collapse in front of his very eyes. His proud designs for the future have been reduced to dust. His triumphant entry into the capital city of his enemies has been transformed into a humiliating retreat that has only just begun.

The actor in this drama is Senator John McCain. His downfall was the comprehensive immigration reform:

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain on Thursday backed a scaled-down proposal that imposes strict rules to end illegal immigration but doesn't include a path to citizenship.

The move away from a comprehensive measure is an about-face for the Arizona senator, who had been a leading GOP champion of a bill that included a guest worker program and would have legalized many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. It failed earlier this year.

"We can still show the American people that we are serious about securing our nation's border," McCain said in a statement, adding that the new bill would "provide an essential step toward achieving comprehensive reform in the future."

It seems just yesterday that McCain was piously accusing "secure the border first" advocates of being racist xenophobic klansmen gestapo brownshirts who would plunge the American economy into chaos out of sheer hatred for "the Other". Now McCain himself -- apparently the last Republican alive to learn this particular lesson -- wants to secure the border first.

2008 is over for McCain, but like an aggrieved Shakespearean prince, McCain will not let go of his ambitions for the throne. The humiliation, then, must go on... and on... and on...