Joe Klein Praises McCain for Being 'A Pariah to Blowhards Like Limbaugh'

In this week's cover piece for "Time" magazine entitled, "Obama: The Game Changer," Joe Klein praised John McCain for having won the nomination by being "a pariah to blowhards like Limbaugh." However the Time magazine columnist advised the Arizona senator to keep it clean as he warned: "If McCain wants to maintain his reputation as a politician more honorable than most, he's going to have to stop the sleaze."

The following is the full excerpt as it appears in the May 19 edition of "Time" magazine:

In his victory speech after the smashing North Carolina results came in, Obama went directly after both McCain and the media. "[McCain's] plan to win in November appears to come from the very same playbook that his side has used time after time in election after election," Obama said. "Yes, we know what's coming. I'm not naive. We've already seen it, the same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all their ideas, the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives, by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy, in the hopes that the media will play along."

That may have been unfair to McCain, since the Senator from Arizona won the Republican nomination in much the same way Obama has triumphed — as an outsider, an occasional reformer, a pariah to blowhards like Limbaugh. But it's also true that McCain has a choice to make: in the past month, he has wobbled between the high and low roads, at one point calling Obama the Hamas candidate for President after a member of that group "endorsed" the Senator from Illinois. If McCain wants to maintain his reputation as a politician more honorable than most, he's going to have to stop the sleaze.

Photo credit: Time.com bio photo of Klein.