[Wolfstar]

Proving that "true centrists" can't get elected.

Doesn't prove anything. Quite apart from where he is on the political spectrum, McCain had enormous baggage. Everything from his health and age issues, to his constant betrayal of the Republican Party, to his refusal to take on Obama in any serious way, to his inability to articulate any vision...or articulate anything, for that matter.

[okie01]

Underneath it all, McCain wasn't really a "true centrist", becaise what he really was was a rank opportunist. It was his opportunism that navigated him to what appeared to him to be the middle. As such he was, in reality, an "artificial centrist".

And I would suggest that there really aren't very many "true centrists", though there are a lot of "artificial centrists". As a group, politicians tend to be opportunists -- and they'll all head for where they believe the flak is the least. They won't necessarily act centrist, but they'll sure as hell talk "centrist".

How many of our Presidents since, say, 1960 have been "centrist" in thought, word and deed?

Obama isn't a centrist, that's for sure.