John McCain's campaign slogan, like his campaign, no longer provides straight talk. Maybe he was originally a maverick, but these days you can look deep into his soul and see only a three-letter brand: GOP. It's been one cave-in after another: pushing what he once called excessive tax cuts for millionaires; saying yes to big oil; placing his once-honorable campaign in the hands of the Karl Rove machine of gutter politics.

Add to that a running mate who, beneath the winkin', grinnin', aw-shucks mannerisms, lethally combines the dangerous certitude and lack of curiosity of George Bush with the hate-mongering smears of Newt Gingrich and who might be only one melanoma away from the presidency.

McCain promises the same hands-off corporate economic policy, instinct-driven and lone-cowboy foreign policy and activist right-wing court-packing of the last eight years. With McCain, we could end up with a perfect storm of another Great Depression, world war and McCarthyism.

-- Richard Slovak, North Brunswick

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