January 7, 2008
Article Excerpt:
In the first hours of the Iowa caucus count, on-air pundits suggested a disappointment in store for John McCain, who'd hoped to finish third, but was tailing well behind Fred Thompson.
Then a camera crew found Sen. McCain, who looked, as he does of late, like a man in touch with some reality the news gatherers have yet to catch up with (he ended up in a tie with Sen. Thompson).
We're becoming accustomed again to his sparkle, that glint of humor in his eyes and the self-possession which seemed to vanish for a while when the death knells for his campaign began ringing out last year, along with predictions he would soon leave the field for lack of money.
He didn't, needless to say. The McCain campaign began to right itself, the poll standings soon showed the candidate gaining steadily, and by late fall, the media again had a story it loved -- a Phoenix rising from the ashes.
The reports of this political demise had been, you could say, greatly exaggerated -- but also strangely revelatory. In the midst of all the gloomy prognostications that John McCain was as good as gone, one encountered person after unexpected person -- people, that is, who don't vote Republican -- who announced themselves McCain enthusiasts.
They are an old story, these Americans who discovered Mr. McCain in 2000, but it is a story with new meaning today. All those New York editors sitting in publishing houses, those teachers and publicists and medical professionals, remained solid McCainites.
Whatever their political views, whatever shift in their opinions, they seemed, those I knew, to have lost none of their feeling for this candidate. For all his politically incorrect positions -- his support of the war, and George Bush -- or perhaps because of them, this core army of his admirers remains as certain as they ever were, if not more, that he's the man to lead the nation.
In the primary campaign of 2000, people stood for hours in the freezing cold. In upstate towns they waited for Mr. McCain, home-made signs in their hands, their messages so brief, so charged with the emotions of the men and women holding them -- "AMERICAN HERO" -- it took your breath away to see it.
The transportation for the candidate and reporters traveling with him had been named, only half-mischievously, the Straight Talk Express. Now, these hard years later, the meaning of that name takes on larger dimensions, and the straight talk in question -- about the war, about his support for the president, his stand on immigration, all so costly to him, and so unhesitatingly given -- has also been the making of him. It is this, first of all, that people recognize in him.
Almost as in the old days, he's begun to get plenty of respect from the media. Though the word "old" keeps showing up in regular, not always innocent and invariably hammy tributes -- as when his name is attached to terms like "the old warrior" or simply "old soldier." There's indeed something suitable in the word as regards Mr. McCain, but it is nothing having to do with his age.
That ingrained pride of his that forbids pandering for political gain -- that would be shamed by lying about his deeply held views -- is what is old about him. Old in the sense that honor of this kind is sufficiently rare, now, that it's a subject of wonderment to people when they find it in someone, as they have in John McCain.
The rarity of such standards -- the lack of consciousness, even, among political contenders, that limitless pandering might actually be wrong, and say something damning about the character and judgment of the candidate -- has never seemed more evident than in the current primary race.
Who can forget Mitt Romney listening in seeming amazement, a few weeks ago, as Tim Russert pressed him to explain certain extraordinary (if politically convenient) turnabout stands he'd taken on gay marriage, the right to life and other hot social issues?
A model of self-assurance, Mr. Romney expressed his astonishment at the questions, at the idea that a man couldn't develop new positions. And what kind of a leader, he wanted to know, would he be if he never changed his mind about anything, etc., etc.
What one remembered most about this scene, which had all the makings of one of Hollywood's cruder Washington satires, was Mr. Romney's easy aplomb -- the air of a man who, it was quite conceivable, had come to believe in the fantastic rationales he'd offered up for all the flip-flopping.
Mr. McCain's views on immigration and perhaps a number of other issues may never win the approval of some of his strongest supporters. But to those who have watched him these many years, that can't in the end matter.
They know who he is.
Those differences likely won't matter in New Hampshire, either, which he won the last time round. . .
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