It's been odd, through the course of this campaign, to watch John McCain detach from his own mythology. By this point, there's a vague sense that the guy was once a maverick, was once an uncommonly honorable politician, but folks have basically forgotten what all that's about. It's like if you knew Peter Parker was strong, but had forgotten all that stuff about spiders. It's instructive, though, to go back and reread the McCain myth in its purer forms, and you could do worse than this 2005 New Yorker profile from Connie Bruck.2005, you have to remember, was the high point for McCain. Bush was already losing ground among elites. McCain wasn't yet running for anything. He was just coming off four years spent spitefully screwing over his party, a period that now seems like spite but then looked like principle. And his apology tour was still fresh in the public mind. Take this bit:
That, of course, is not from John McCain himself. It's from a local Republican Party office. Similarly, the Virginia State Chairman who told his workers to call Obama a terrorist is not, himself, John McCain, but the two are campaigning together. It's not quite the same as McCain himself accepting the racist's narrative of the Confederate Flag, but nor is it a campaign approach congruent with the man who traveled back to South Carolina to condemn his own complicity in enduring racial strife and revisionism. At this point, it might be better for McCain that few remember the acts and moments that built his reputation. This way, he doesn't seem to have fallen quite so far.
It was in South Carolina, too, that McCain made the biggest mistake of his campaign. In January, 2000, while he and Bush were fighting for New Hampshire’s primary voters, South Carolinians had become enmeshed in a debate about whether the Confederate flag should be flown from the state capitol. Bush avoided taking a position by saying that it should be decided by the people of South Carolina. Two days later, on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” McCain was asked what the Confederate flag meant to him. He said that the flag was offensive “in many, many ways,” and added, “As we all know, it’s a symbol of racism and slavery.” Chuck Larson, who was campaigning for his old friend, told me that when McCain stopped in Washington after that interview he met him in the private area of the airport; John Weaver was there, too, and McCain asked Weaver how he thought the interview had gone. Larson recalled, “Weaver said, ‘Terrible! You said the rebel flag is a symbol of racism and slavery!’ John said, ‘It is!’ ‘Well, it’s your race to lose!’ Weaver said, and stormed off. John let him go, and then he said, ‘It’s really hard, not to say what you feel.’ ”The next day, when McCain was asked by a reporter about the flag, he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and read, “As to how I view the flag, I understand both sides. Some view it as a symbol of slavery. Others view it as a symbol of heritage. Personally, I see the battle flag as a symbol of heritage.” Weaver, who had helped draft the statement, said that McCain “read it as though he were in the Hanoi Hilton, being given something to read by his captors. It was the only time we consultants got in the way of John’s instincts—and it was the wrong thing to do."...(A few weeks later, he returned to South Carolina, and apologized for having sacrificed principle to his ambition by retracting his initial remarks about the flag.)It was an honorable moment, and it featured prominently in the John McCain mythology. Does anyone remember it now? Or is this the sort of thing that will come to be associated with his campaign?
That, of course, is not from John McCain himself. It's from a local Republican Party office. Similarly, the Virginia State Chairman who told his workers to call Obama a terrorist is not, himself, John McCain, but the two are campaigning together. It's not quite the same as McCain himself accepting the racist's narrative of the Confederate Flag, but nor is it a campaign approach congruent with the man who traveled back to South Carolina to condemn his own complicity in enduring racial strife and revisionism. At this point, it might be better for McCain that few remember the acts and moments that built his reputation. This way, he doesn't seem to have fallen quite so far. 
