The hell that is John McCain’s life is not pretty. It is not clear how many circles has the hell that is McCain’s life, but I think Dante could get a few more volumes out of it. Todd Purdum has a great article about it at Vanity Fair.
McCain is basically a populist. There are populist issues that draw people to both major parties. But the conundrum for McCain is that the populist issues he favors are more popular with the Democratic Party. He’s a Democrat in a Republican’s body.
Another issue surfaces with McCain: veracity of the press. Media people want access and are willing to tell less than the whole truth so as not to upset the subject and lose access. Why? Without access, they don’t work. So a devious pas de deux ensues where the media people are willing partners in the attempt by the subject to control media image.
If this awkward little day of straddling feels familiar, it is because McCain has tried it before. In the 2000 campaign, he waded straight into the hottest controversy in South Carolina, not long before his crucial primary showdown with George W. Bush, by offering his unvarnished opinion on whether the Confederate battle flag—the Stars and Bars—should continue to fly over the state capitol. “As we all know, it’s a symbol of racism and slavery,” McCain said. After John Weaver and others did more than whisper in his ear, McCain took to reading aloud from a piece of paper with a statement that began, “As to how I view the flag, I understand both sides,” and went downhill from there.
For better or worse, McCain’s campaign was never the same again. And no one is more aware of this than John McCain himself. In Worth the Fighting For, his second memoir, written with his longtime aide Mark Salter in 2002, McCain reflected on what he had done:
By the time I was asked the question for the fourth or fifth time, I could have delivered the response from memory. But I persisted with the theatrics of unfolding the paper and reading it as if I were making a hostage statement. I wanted to telegraph to reporters that I really didn’t mean to suggest I supported flying the flag, but political imperatives required a little evasiveness on my part. I wanted them to think me still an honest man, who simply had to cut a corner a little here and there so that I could go on to be an honest president.
I think that made the offense worse. Acknowledging my dishonesty with a wink didn’t make it less a lie. It compounded the offense by revealing how willful it had been. You either have the guts to tell the truth or you don’t. You don’t get any dispensation for lying in a way that suggests your dishonesty.
McCain wants to be President, badly. I think that the story about him will revolve about that want, not his qualifications.
And to put this in perspective, after listing McCain’s injuries in Vietnam and summarizing the torture he endured as a prisoner of war, Purdum writes:
Because his broken arms were allowed to heal without ever being properly set, to this day McCain cannot raise his arms above his shoulders. He cannot attend to his own hair. An aide is often nearby with a comb and small can of hair spray.
McCain has difficulty putting on his suit jacket unassisted. Once, as we prepared to get out of a cramped airplane cabin in Burlington, Vermont, where McCain would be greeted by the governor, I turned my back for a moment, only to find him struggling. He could sense that his collar was all bunched up, and asked me matter-of-factly to help him straighten it out. I felt the pang that those around McCain feel whenever they realize the extent of his injuries. “You comb someone’s hair once,” his 2000 communications director, Dan Schnur, says, “and you never forget it.”
One of McCain’s aides tells me that two years ago, campaigning with McCain, George W. Bush asked him if the senator would like to work out with him. Told that McCain did not, could not, really “work out,” Bush replied, “What do you mean?”
He means that you, Mr. Bush, will never understand the sacrifices some people are willing to make for this country.
McCain’s stigmata draw people to him, but what about the rest of him? Time will tell.