Where has McCain's honor gone?

It was 1997 when I had my John McCain moment.

That's when as a member of the press you swoon a bit as you realize this guy is different from the rest.

I was a reporter covering Congress. The leaders of 230 Indian tribes had gathered across the street from the Capitol, an emergency meeting to protest two policies that our senator at the time, Slade Gorton, had tried to slip through without a public hearing.

The laws would have eroded the tribes' rights to self-governance, as spelled out in 150-year-old treaties. That sounds technical. But in Indian country, those treaties — which they were forced to sign — have long been considered the only tiny hold on power they have.

Now someone was trying to roll them back. As some tribes were finally emerging from decades of poverty and isolation.

I ran into McCain heading to the meeting. He had no aides with him. He was off to "go stand with the tribes," he said.

Go back and read the treaties, McCain said. It's obvious what we agreed to. We took millions of acres of their land and, in turn, signed these deals. To unilaterally rewrite the terms now is another act of deception, betrayal, bad faith.

Our honor is at stake, he said. Not theirs. Ours.

I've been a McCain fan ever since. The tribes had no clout then, and there were no TV cameras around. Here was a politician doing something not for his own benefit, but because it was right.

Which makes the detestable campaign he's now running difficult for me to come to grips with.

A number of readers have chided me for it. How can I keep calling McCain honorable?

I can't anymore. Not after last week.

All candidates spin. And campaigns can get rough. But McCain has crossed into outright lies.

Such as the ad he cut saying Barack Obama wants to have comprehensive sex-ed classes for kindergartners.

"Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family," the ad says, mixing photos of schools and kids with a menacing or confused Obama.

You can see the many ways this ad is not true at factcheck.org, a nonpartisan center at the University of Pennsylvania that seeks to combat "deception in U.S. politics." It called the ad "simply false."

It's also simply ugly. It's one thing to misstate your opponent's plans (Obama has done that). It's quite another to say — to lie — that he's unhinged, alien, a danger to children.

It's not only this one ad. Here are other phrases factcheck.orghas used to describe other McCain ads, all put out this past week: "Less than honest." "Doubly false." "Particularly egregious."

Does lying matter anymore? Is it so common that voters will shrug and say: "Oh well, everybody does it. What's the big deal?"

This is the presidency. And this time it isn't lies from an independent group or anonymous blog. It's from the candidate himself.

What happened to McCain? Maybe he has many sides. Or maybe I judged him wrong. But I remember the reason he impressed me was because he showed me, in person, how he believed in something intangible, a principle beyond the game of politics.

Now I can't tell what he believes in. Beyond winning. Any sleazy way he can.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.