How deep is the hole you've fallen into, John McCain? Is it deeper than the one you once occupied as a guest of the North Vietnamese?

How many splinters did your advisers have to shove under your nails to get you to recite the litany of boldly imagined falsehoods that has become your mantra day after day?

Is any light allowed to penetrate your self-imposed darkness? Do you find yourself stirring in a bed of your own making, nostalgic for lost honor and a clear conscience?

More than any other politician of your generation, you can speak authoritatively of having fallen into two holes in your life, Sen. McCain.

We're familiar with the hole you were thrown into 40 years ago after you were shot out of the skies over Hanoi.

You remind us of it at every campaign stop and televised appearance. Your history of personal valor fills the vacuum created by the paucity of your ideas. Next to your running mate, tales of torture at the hands of your captors is your greatest asset.

The other hole is the one you've thrown yourself into since securing the Republican nomination. Your new home is the self-imposed darkness of a man who jettisoned his principles for an even shot at the highest office in the land.

You once said you'd rather lose an election than lose a war. Is it worth winning an election if it means forfeiting your soul on the altar of political expediency?

How does a man survive five years in a Vietnamese dungeon only to allow himself to be turned into a cynical marionette by the nihilistic disciples of Karl Rove?

Now you're putty in the hands of the same men who portrayed you as mentally and emotionally unstable during the Republican primaries of 2000. They buried you under a compost of innuendo and lies in South Carolina.

Where is the honor in adapting the tactics of men who once mocked you as a Manchurian candidate eight years ago?

You lost that nomination fight to George W. Bush, a man whose name you and your cohorts can barely bring yourselves to utter in public today.

You considered him insubstantial at the time you competed against him, but you fell in line with his presidency and voted the way he wanted you to more than 90 percent of the time.

Perhaps a more accurate definition of "maverick" today is someone who stands against everything John McCain once stood for.

Still, you say you represent an insurgency against Republican-ruled government so incompetent at governing that an American city literally drowned under its watch.

Even if you're able to repeat your predecessor's trick of fooling enough of the voters to prevail in November, you'll spend the rest of your days in the hole you've fallen into, John McCain.

Like Marlowe's Faustus or Robert Johnson selling his soul to become the greatest blues guitarist of his time, you've become a prisoner of the very devils you've employed.

Where is the honor in reciting lies for something as transient as political advantage? What are we as voters supposed to make of political ads that accuse Barack Obama of advocating sex education for kindergartners?

Are we supposed to believe your campaign's repeated assertions that Sarah Palin opposed the "bridge to nowhere" along with the earmarks connected to it? More than a dozen news organizations have already demolished this myth.

This week, you covered yourself in glory by pretending to faint over Barack Obama's use of a cliche embraced across the political spectrum. The old John McCain would have been too proud to have faked umbrage over Mr. Obama's "lipstick on a pig is still a pig" comment. It would have been beneath the dignity of someone who has used the term many times himself to complain.

Your campaign really ought to be horsewhipped for suggesting that your opponent was making an oblique reference to your running mate. Where is the evidence for this beyond the fevered imagination of your strategists?

Of the two of you -- and, please, be honest -- who has the history of making cruel and degrading comments about women in public?

Despite the intellectually dishonest maneuvering of your campaign, many Americans admire you, John McCain. Before you embraced the darkness, I was among those who disagreed with your politics, but considered you honorable.

Now it's hard to look at you without seeing the scoundrels who made you what you are today.