Script blindness, part 3

I've been trying to puzzle out this article by Michael Kinsey, so far without much success. My first reading left me with the feeling that Kinsley was yet another pundit suffering from script blindness. Then I saw Altercation.

Unrequited Love Quote of the Day: (I love Mike Kinsley; he doesn’t love me.) “How many Americans and Iraqis should die so that we can enjoy entertaining presidential speeches?” The End of John McCain begins here.

and wondered if I'd entirely mistaken Kinsley's meaning. So I'm asking my thousands of readers to weigh in. What do you think? (emphasis below is mine)

All successful politicians must have at least some talent for telling lies about what's in their hearts and convincing people that it is the truth. But Sen. John McCain has a unique genius for telling the truth from his heart and making people believe that he is lying. And these people are his supporters! They admire him as a straight-talking truth–teller, and they forgive him for taking positions on big issues that they find repellent on the grounds that he doesn't really mean what he says.

"Oh, he has to say that to get the Republican nomination," explain many Democrats with girlish crushes on the charming, funny, intelligent, and heroic Republican senator from Arizona, and/or a special loathing of their party's own star, the junior senator from New York. "That" might refer to McCain's strong right-to-life stand on abortion, or his strong support for the war in Iraq, or his recent rapprochement with Jerry Falwell. They respect McCain as an honest man among sneaks, a straight shooter amid bull artists. They long, understandably, for some fresh air in the fetid atmosphere of politics. And McCain delivers that.

Note how it's democrats who are subject to "girlish crushes" McCain. To my ears the term "girlish crushes" is exactly the kind of dismissive girlie-man invective Rove likes to see used against democrats. I challenge you to look at this paragraph and tell me whether Kinsley is lauding McCain, or slamming him.

Even better, he delivers the fresh air without the cloying aroma of piety. Or rather, he can be pious, but the piety is diluted and made bearable by the knowing wink. He makes jokes at his own expense. That's attractive in a politician, but sometimes it is nothing more than a party trick. McCain goes further: Like Bob Dole, he makes jokes—mean jokes, in public—about others. That takes more wit and more guts. McCain is a good kind of cynic: He shares his cynicism with the rest of the class. The cynicism makes the piety bearable, while the piety makes the cynicism acceptable.

Say what? At the end Kinsley does slam McCain, but it's couched in such follow-the-script verbiage that I'm confused as to which side he ends up settled on.

But Falwell is a man who promoted tapes during the Clinton administration accusing the president of murdering political opponents. Sure, he has the right to say whatever he wants. But that is not the key point about Falwell. McCain made the key point six years ago. Today he ducks it...

...With McCain, something more magical is going on. He says plainly that he is for the war, or against abortion choice, and people hear the opposite. It's a gift, I guess.

Just as Kinsley has a gift for firmly straddling both sides of the fence on John McCain.