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The myth of John McCain

Sidney Blumenthal

The Republican frontrunner's popularity has nose-dived.

WHEN SENATOR John McCain appeared at the U.K. Conservative Party's annual conference last October as the presumptive next President of the United States, the stars seemed fixed in the firmament for him. The myth of Mr. McCain appeared as invincible as ever.

His war story — a bomber pilot shot down over North Vietnam in 1967, held prisoner for five years and tortured — is the basis of his legend as morally courageous, authentic, unwavering in his convictions, an independent reformer willing to take on the reactionaries of his own party, an "American maverick" as he calls himself in his campaign autobiography.

Mr. McCain's political colleagues, however, know another side of the action hero — a volatile man with a hair-trigger temper, who shouted at Senator Ted Kennedy on the Senate floor to "shut up," and hurled obscenities at fellow Republican Senators. A few months ago, Mr. McCain suddenly rushed up to a friend of mine, a prominent Washington lawyer, at a social event, and threatened to beat him up because he represented a client Mr. McCain happened to dislike. Then, just as suddenly, profusely and tearfully, he apologised.

Mr. McCain's political advisers believe that he would easily be elected President in 2008, but fear that he might not capture the nomination. In 2000 he did not win a primary State where the voting was restricted to Republicans. So Mr. McCain decided to let the election take care of itself as he won over the party faithful. He campaigned enthusiastically for Mr. Bush in 2004. He sought to reconcile with the religious Right, whose leaders he had called "agents of intolerance" in 2000.

Mr. McCain had belatedly taken the lead in opposing Mr. Bush's torture policy, an issue that could not be more personal for him. But after the Supreme Court last year declared Mr. Bush's secret tribunals for detainees and use of extreme interrogation techniques illegal, the President sought congressional approval of his version. At first, Mr. McCain fought Mr. Bush, but the Right attacked him. Mr. McCain quickly capitulated, even agreeing to suspension of habeas corpus. Someone close to him explained to me that Mr. McCain calculated he could continue to play the issue when he became chairman of the Senate armed services committee in the next Congress. Asked about the chance that the Democrats might take control, Mr. McCain declared: "I think I'd just commit suicide."

As the neoconservatives abandoned Mr. Bush's sinking ship, Mr. McCain welcomed them aboard. "McCain began reading the Weekly Standard and conferring with its editors, particularly Bill Kristol," the New Republic magazine reported. And he hired a board member of the neocon Project for the New American Century, Randy Scheunemann, as his foreign-policy aide.

Mr. McCain positioned himself as consistently belligerent, even to Mr. Bush's right: in favour of bombing Iran and North Korea. He also proposed a "surge" of troops into Iraq, an idea gleaned from the neocons. If Mr. Bush had adopted the Iraq Study Group approach of diplomacy and redeployment, which Mr. McCain had assailed as "dispiriting," the Right would have hailed Mr. McCain as a prophet with honour. However, importuned by the same neocons who had sold it to Mr. McCain, Mr. Bush seized upon the "surge."

Mr. McCain had trapped himself. He is now chained to Mr. Bush. As Mr. Bush's war has escalated, Mr. McCain's popularity has nose-dived. Still the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, he might have made himself more acceptable to the base, but his political strategy has shattered his myth. Bearing the burden of Mr. Bush, he may have become unelectable. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

(Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is the author of How Bush Rules.)

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