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MCCAIN V. MCCAIN. The post below on McCain's anti-gay pandering reminded me of an old anecdote from Michael Lewis's excellent Trail Fever. Lewis, who chronicled the 1996 election, ran often into McCain, one of Bob Dole's most popular surrogates. In a book filled with diminished men and pathetic pols, McCain is presented as a rare hero, a larger-than-life, deeply authentic, convictions-oriented leader. The apogee of that portrayal comes near the end of the book, in this tale:
And then a young woman who works for him rushes up, carrying a cell phone. McCain takes a series of calls from Arizona reporters. The may of Tempe has just been exposed as a homosexual. The revelation, in Arizona, could kill a politician: indeed, it might tarnish a politician too closely associated with the victim. All of the reporters are calling to see what McCain thinks, and McCain doesn;'t hesitate to tell them. Standing in the dark beside the chain-link fence outside the United Center he takes the phones and says, over and over, "The mayor of Tempe is a friend of mine. He is a fine man. Who the hell cares if he's gay?"Does anyone believe John McCain -- that John McCain -- genuinely thinks the mayor of Tempe, a friend of his, a "fine man," shouldn't be able to legally enter a committed union that grants him and his partner the same legal rights as other married couples? I don't. McCain has a lot of opinions I find odious, but he doesn't strike me as a bigot. Which makes his willingness to bow down to bigotry for votes all the more galling. And that's the problem with McCain's pander: He'll lose independents who respected his authenticity, Democrats who respected his tolerance, and still won't win Republicans who mistrust his views on social issues. And, in the process, he'll sacrifice his dignity. McCain has been blessed to play the role of transcendent political hero in three successive presidential elections -- 1996, 2000, and 2004. 2008 will be his last go around, and what a sad coda it will be to his career if he both loses and emerges a diminished, compromised figure.--Ezra Klein
