Past Perfect

People are already writing things like this about Sen. McCain vs. Presidential Candidate McCain (this is from a series of brief mostly serious articles in yesterday's NYT about What I Will Miss About President Bush, www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/opinion/02bush.html):

Past Perfect

I feel nostalgic about the person I knew as Gov. George W. Bush. I miss that guy. He was the best politician I ever saw. He really was “a uniter, not a divider.” He refused to kowtow to the far right. He worked with Democrats to strengthen public education, while Republicans were pushing vouchers. He had four vacancies on the Texas Supreme Court and he filled them all with centrist judges. The extreme right wing of the Republican Party was his enemy, not his ally. His administration was untainted by scandal. Karl Rove remained an outside consultant rather than a gubernatorial staffer.

But when he reached the White House, Governor Bush vanished, to be replaced by President George W. Bush — a person I didn’t recognize. He was never to return.

— PAUL BURKA, the senior executive editor of Texas Monthly