Today's big political profile is Todd Purdum's "The Man Who Never Was," in Vanity Fair, in which the intrepid reporter smacks his forehead in astonishment! John McCain, it turns out, might never have been much of a "maverick" after all, but simply a run-of-the-mill Washington operator:

Yes, the Republican Party seems to have gone a little nuts, at least in Delaware, or as Jon Chait explains it well, it is “reaping the whirlwind” for its choice to cast political debate in the Obama era in apocalyptic terms.