I’m usually at least slightly reluctant to slander an honored veteran. There’s a sort of mythic aura about the title, something incredibly decent about the men it describes. John Kerry, for all his faults, and Bob Dole, a paradigm of erectile dysfunction and early-onset senility, still selflessly served their country. But there are always exceptions, and no matter how seemingly self-assured, self-stylized, or self-made, John McCain is one of them.

Though neither his experiences nor his injuries were slight, his willingness to market his ordeals, like cracking jokes about being “tied up” at the Hanoi Hilton during Woodstock, undermines whatever apparent honor he may hold. He’s a chameleon, shifting positions when political convenience strikes, wrapping himself in a mantle of self-confessed independence but maintaining a voting record that just doesn’t add up. He’s just another politician, just another Republican, just another man glorifying himself and asking others to glorify him too. And he’s incompetent.

John McCain was born in 465 BC, right around the development of the Athenian acropolis. He takes credit for democracy, heralding it as the only thing worth fighting for. He’s quick to point out that women’s rights should be limited—remember what Sparta did to their young?—if given at all. He was for transferring the Delian treasury to Athens until he was implicated in the Parthenon Five scandal. He was against tax breaks for wealthy Athenians before he was for them. He was critical of the handling of the Persian Wars, even though he agreed with their mission. Still, he was a foot soldier in Pericles’ army, and he defended the Athenian Empire until his first death.

Thousands of years later, John “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood” McCain was reborn. He’s survived the War in Vietnam, the Keating Five scandal, the collapse of two presidential campaigns, the bleak image of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his support of immigration reform, the fight against global warming and campaign-finance restrictions—and he married a cougar along the way. The Republicans have bestowed upon him the crown of the Grand Old Party, forgiving him his sins and asking for no repentance. They expect that some wary Democrats asking, “Who’s that black man and that woman?” and shocked independents—a black man and a woman?!—will come into their fold, electing a conservative “maverick” over either of the Democratic Party’s potential nominees. They figure he may not be a strict conservative, but he’s a veteran, adored by the media, and just moderate enough to attract the other side.

What these Republicans don’t see—but what most Democrats and I do—is that John McCain is more than a flawed conservative; he’s a flawed man. The arguments that GOP operatives make against Senator Hillary Clinton are the very ones Democrats should be making against John McCain. They say she wraps herself in a mantel of victimization; he wraps himself in the American flag. They say she vacillates on issues of national security; he vacillates on every foreign policy question asked. They say she’s a big-business Democrat cum populist; he’s proved that a politician can discredit campaign-finance reform before supporting it and reject tax breaks for the wealthy before backing them. Most odiously, John McCain is a man for whom the most severe of tragedies has become the most bankable of campaign gimmicks: his horrible experiences in Vietnam have been repackaged and marketed as the only truly noble form of public service, and his sole qualification for holding elective office.

I do not mean to undermine John McCain’s service to his country. The issue isn’t his injuries sustained or his emotional turmoil experienced: it is his unabashed attempts to excuse his failures through his strong record of military service. He is nothing more than an incompetent charlatan, a man concerned more about his title than his effects, a man more devoted to his reputation than his country. If he were really the maverick he claims to be, he would break with Republican orthodoxy and admit that his antiquated movement doesn’t know shit about the world.

And if that doesn’t convince you, he’s still very, very old.