He's not the man he said he was

As a proud member of the angry left, I have to tip my hat to Hilzoy at The Washington Monthly for his double-whammy posts that explain why some of us have so much to be angry about.

Here's the first compare and contrast between McCain and Obama:

It's worth noting that only one of the two major party candidates in this race who saw fit, in his acceptance speech, to focus our attention on his own character, to remind us that he has been his country's servant "first, last, and always", and to say things like: "I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's." A servant, you might think, should not draw attention to himself, or insist on his own humility. And yet, oddly, it was the other candidate who focused not on himself but on us, on the challenges facing our country, and on what he planned to do about them.
There is also only one candidate whose speech gave the impression that simply by arriving in a place he has actually inhabited for several decades and deploying the force of his character in its general direction, he will change "the way government does almost everything". The other one gave us not a just promise to stand up to special interests, or to show backbone and not back down, but specifics about what, exactly, he planned to do, while reminding us not just that our country was great, but why.
Finally, there was one candidate who saw fit to tell flat-out lies about his opponent's positions. That should be no surprise, since that same candidate has previously shown himself to be willing to lie about anything, and to impugn his opponent's patriotism. What's odd, though, is that the candidate who did that comes from the party that goes on about how politicians have contempt for ordinary people, people who are not elites. What, I wonder, is more contemptuous than lying to their face?
Luckily, though, most people probably slept through it, and didn't notice the insult to themselves and their intelligence.

And here is the second that talks about the lies and hypocrisy from John McCain and his campaign.

I am very, very angry about the Iraq war, and about the lives it has cost. When I hear someone who voted for that war talk about how very much he hates war, and how he will do everything he can to avoid it, it makes me angry. And when I hear that in the midst of a convention full of people who act as though they own love of country, concern for the troops, duty, honor, and service -- as though none of the rest of us has ever put the interests of others before our own, or loved our country, or lost friends in combat -- and acting this way in apparently complete disregard for their own disastrous record -- it makes me even angrier.
I didn't want to write about that. It's still pretty close to the bone. But I have never thought that I had a monopoly on honor and decency and love for my country. I wish more prominent Republicans would stop assuming that they do.