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John McCain — flexible aggression
A reflective gadfly
Politically and intellectually, Mr. McCain is a gadfly. Most other lawmakers cultivate one area of expertise like health care, foreign affairs or the budget. Senator McCain, at the apex of his career, hopscotches in and out of pet causes, from patients’ rights to sue health insurers to fuel-efficiency standards to defense contract cost overruns.
He reads widely, not only in public policy but also in fiction and history. An aide who looked in his briefcase in July found three books he was reading, two of which he has echoed in public statements since then.
One was “The Return of History and the End of Dreams,” by the hawkish foreign policy thinker Robert Kagan, which posits a return to regional great power politics and arguably anticipated Russia’s recent incursion into Georgia. Another was “Tell Me How This Ends,” an admiring account of the troop “surge” in Iraq that Mr. McCain was among the first to embrace. A third book was “Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922,” a popular history of a remote event, the sacking of an Aegean city.
Mr. Bobbitt, the scholar who met with Mr. McCain over several days three months ago to talk about his recent work, “Terror and Consent,” said he was surprised by the candidate’s willingness to question his own suppositions. “He is still reading and learning,” Mr. Bobbitt said. “He didn’t have any of the attitude of ‘Look, I am in the middle of a campaign, this is what I have said, this is how it is going to be’ that you would understandably get three months before an election.”
First taste of politics
Mr. McCain first tasted politics in 1977 as the Navy’s liaison to the United States Senate — a bag carrier, some called the job. He was 40 and unsure of his future, devouring Theodore H. White’s election chronicles to fill in the history he missed, and he turned the assignment into a training seminar for his own political career.
Escorting lawmakers on overseas trips and entertaining them with stories of his naval escapades, Mr. McCain listened as the senators gossiped over evening cocktails, or brought him into closed committee staff meetings. And he capitalized on their goodwill: Senator William Cohen of Maine, best man at Mr. McCain’s 1980 wedding, and Senator John Tower of Texas, who many said treated Captain McCain like a son, provided invaluable help in his 1982 election to a House seat in Arizona.
As a senator or presidential candidate, Mr. McCain prefers to make decisions by consulting experts with opposing views, preferably watching them clash. “He encourages disagreement in front of him, to see the evidence that disagrees with where he might be headed,” said Kevin A. Hassett, an economist close to Mr. McCain.
He sometimes re-examines a position with as little prompting as a voter’s comment in a town hall meeting, his advisers say. After questions during his 2000 primary campaign about global warming or health insurance, for example, he set out to investigate. He soon startled Senate Democrats by co-sponsoring a “patients’ bill of rights.” He read widely about climate change, visited both polar ice caps and became the leading Republican sponsor of legislation to cut emissions.
Vietnam, inevitably, has become a recurring reference point. He has often cited the familiar lesson that the United States should never commit its troops without broad public support — “the Vietnam thing,” he recently called it. But he also faults the political leaders of that time for failing to rally Americans to the fight.. He argues that the withdrawal emboldened foes by damaging the nation’s credibility, and ultimately concluded that he had taken the wrong lesson from Vietnam when he supported the pullout of United States troops from Somalia in 1994.
“Osama bin Laden observed our withdrawal,” Mr. McCain wrote in his 2002 memoir, “and concluded that America no longer had the stomach for war.”
Mindset of a warrior
Though his causes may change, Mr. McCain brings the mindset of a warrior to each fight. After Sept. 11, 2001, for example, he argued forcefully and almost immediately for invading Iraq. He repeated assertions about Iraq’s weapons programs and terrorist ties, but his main argument was that the public reaction to the attacks presented an “opportunity” to deter other potential threats by making an example of Saddam Hussein.
On other Senate issues, he would bark out tactical goals in morning strategy sessions with his legislative co-sponsors. “It is like laying out a battle plan,” Mr. Salter said. “He would say, ‘O.K., this guy in my caucus is a lawyer and he is going to say this. Who do we got that is a lawyer to talk to him? Who do we got? Who do we got?’ ”
He can take defeat hard. After conservatives blocked a major tobacco bill he had negotiated in 1998, Mr. McCain excoriated his own party for consigning children to lung cancer. After losing fights over campaign finance rules, he would lash out at his opponents as corrupt.
He relishes conflict, his friends say, and would make a confrontational president. As Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a close friend put it: “The man will run across the street to get in a good fight.”
But Mr. McCain could be effective. He learned to exploit his combative instincts to maximize his power, mastering the Senate’s sometimes Machiavellian maneuvers and intrigues. He started trying to climb the ladder of the Senate Republican leadership; aside from his quixotic assaults on earmarks and campaign donations, he was a reliable conservative.
He recognized that in a narrowly divided Senate he could be a pivotal swing player, often able to push forward proposals he favored on the Democratic agenda or at least thwart the will of Republican leaders on the matters he chose (on judicial confirmations or detainee interrogations, for example).
His shifting allegiances infuriated opponents. Sometimes, he conspired with former Republican Senate foes against their party leaders and President Bush (judges). Other times, he joined the president to battle the Democrats (on the Iraq war) or fellow Republicans (on immigration). In between, he basked in accolades from Democrats for siding with them on taxes, Alaskan oil drilling, generic drugs, emission rules and other matters.
Mr. McCain made plenty of enemies. In confrontations, he could explode in profanity, bolt from meetings in rage, or order other lawmakers out of the room. He says he sometimes uses his explosive temper tactically, to intimidate opponents. But he left enough bruises that Democrats had sheaves of old quotes from fellow Republicans about his volatile temper at the ready when he ran for president.
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