Was this the day McCain won the White House?

Lynchburg, Virginia

John McCain has definitely had happier days than last Saturday. As he mounted the podium at Virginia’s Liberty University, once memorably described by its founder, his long-time enemy, as a ‘bible boot camp’ he had a wistful, almost haunted expression. When it was his turn to address his audience of starry-eyed Christian students, there was none of the usual McCain passion and verve. ‘Let me just say that I wish you all well,’ he said. It was hardly the speech to send them out afire to change the world. Rather it was his host, the university’s founder and chancellor, the Revd Jerry Falwell, resplendent in academic robes, who was doing all the beaming — and no wonder.

Six years ago when running against George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination, McCain denounced Falwell, an icon of the Christian Right, as one of America’s ‘agents of intolerance’. Then as his campaign imploded, destroyed by a vicious but brilliantly effective smear campaign orchestrated by social conservatives, he went even further and accused Falwell of having an ‘evil influence on the party’. Now as McCain prepares for another presidential tilt — this time not as an insurgent, as in 2000, but as the party’s frontrunner — he was at Falwell’s side, delivering the university’s annual graduation address.

Has the craggy Arizona senator sold his soul to the devil, as many Democrats believe? Is his appearance with Falwell a sign that the straight-talker of 2000, the moral force who broke with his party to take the Bush administration to task over torture and a range of other issues, will in fact flip-flop and tack like any other bog-standard politician?