Six John McCains, But No Sale

The Instant Information Age goes a step further with a retrospective about the failed McCain campaign in the New York Times Magazine next Sunday, nine days before the election and, true to the spirit of déjà vu on steroids, available online four days earlier.

Time-scrambling aside, "The Making (and Remaking) of McCain" offers a compelling inside view of how the man who might have won the presidency against Al Gore in 2000 will lose it by lurching "from tactic to tactic" this year against Barack Obama, the legacy of George W. Bush and the self he lost in the intervening eight years.

Robert Draper's report is based on talks with "a half-dozen of McCain’s senior-most advisers--most of them more than once and some of them repeatedly" as well as "midlevel advisers and to a number of former senior aides" over the past months.

The campaign, in the classic pattern of losing enterprises, burned through six different narratives about their candidate in a desperate search for a winning formula:

*The Heroic Fighter vs. the Quitters (pumping up the tentative gains of the Surge into Victory with Honor)

*Country-First Deal Maker vs. Nonpartisan Pretender (the maverick who fought his own party as opposed to the newcomer who is all rhetoric)

*Leader vs. Celebrity (to counter the success of Obama's triumphant trip to the Middle East and Europe by picturing him as a celebrity akin to Paris Hilton)

*Team of Mavericks vs. Old-Style Washington (the "Hail Mary" choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate rather than Joe Lieberman, whom he really wanted)

* John McCain vs. John McCain (going along with smears of Obama despite his own misgivings so that he "sometimes seemed to be running against not only Barack Obama but an earlier version of himself")

*The Fighter (Again) vs. the Tax-and-Spend Liberal (a "cobbled together one last narrative with less than a month to go").

All these McCains running in so many different directions make for wistful thinking about what might have been if John McCain, in true maverick style, had overridden all his advisors and campaigned as himself.

Conservative Doubts About the New McCain

With the struggle for his political soul between the Religious Right and Reagan Republicans settled by the choice of a running mate, there are increasing qualms about the new John McCain by traditional voices in his own party.

"Under the pressure of the financial crisis," writes conservative icon George Will, "one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama."

This comes after the Wall Street Journal labels McCain's call for the resignation of SEC Chairman Christopher Cox "unpresidential," demonstrating that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

"McCain's populist bent," CNN reports, "has made some fellow Republicans unhappy" about "his election year migration toward more government control of the economy."

But the doubts run deeper than unhappiness over his stance on the financial bailout.

"Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial," George Will observes, "usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

"It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?"

In an analysis of McCain's decision-making, PBS News Hour quotes his own description: "As a politician, I am instinctive, often impulsive...I don't torture myself over decisions. I make them as quickly as I can, quicker than the other fellow, if I can. Often, my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint."

On that program, McCain's best friend in the Senate, Lindsey Graham, admitted that he wanted Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge for VP but their pro-choice positions ruled them out.

In picking Palin," Graham says, he wanted "to let the American people know that, if he gets to be president, buckle your seats, because we're going to do things different...I'm not so sure it was impulse, certainly from his gut."

As Election Day nears, more and more Americans, including conservative Republicans, are worrying out loud about government by McCain's intestines.