Personally, I've always thought McCain was and is a jerk. The sacrifices he's made for his country are to be commended, and his military service was honorable. However, he's been a mediocre senator all these years and he was a lousy presidential candidate - that's why he lost, trying to be attractive to Rockefeller Republicans and Hillary castoffs and in the process lost his conservative base. Regarding the jerk factor, he did a pretty good job of concealing this during the campaign, but the aftermath has been distasteful to say the least. How hypocritical is it that his lackeys should be blaming Sarah Palin for his defeat with all the sleazy leaks and outright lies being spread to the media after the voting was over? She was the only factor that kept his anemic campaign from being belly-up before October. His lousy temperment has been well-known around Washington for years, and this post-mortem is just more evidence of his vindictiveness. I held my nose and voted for him, believing him to be the lesser of the two evils and the liklihood of him being a one-term president. Hopefully, the GOP can get their act together and come up with a better candidate in 2012 - the certainly couldn't do much worse.