The "acrid taste" of these defeats:
>>I think McCain's decision to throw away his reputation -- deserved or
not -- can most easily be explained by Occam's razor: losing two
hard-fought presidential campaigns have left him bitter and angry. Some
might say crotchety. I had the opportunity to watch the 2008 McCain
campaign very up close and personal and I am convinced that he views
himself as the central character in an epic narrative that was destined
to culminate with the presidency. After all, he was the son and grandson
of two famous admirals. When it became clear that politics, and not
military greatness, was in his future, that would seem to be the logical
progression.
Anyway, seeing his chances for fulfilling this dream
disappear during the 2008 campaign undoubtedly left a particularly acrid
taste in his mouth, given his personal enmity, demonstrated on a number
of occasions, for Obama. I think it's very likely that he decided after
the campaign that he would not help the president accomplish any of his
legislative goals, his past positions be damned. Of course, the primary
challenge from the right didn't help things either, and his desire for
self-preservation forced him to adopt new, GOP primary voter-friendly
stances on a range of issues. But it's arguable that he would have
flipped on those issues anyway given his unwillingness to work with the
president.<<
A parallel with Hubert Humphrey?:
>>I had thought about the unfortunate transformation of John McCain
for some time and thought I'd share my own theory with you: I think it comes down
to the effects of personal ambition and how it can transform people in
political life. Sen. McCain has obviously been an extremely ambitious
person who, more than anything, wanted to become President of the United
States. He tried to do that in 2000 by being himself, and lost badly to
a lesser man. He then began a major transformation, and between 2000
and 2008 did everything he could to ingratiate himself with the
conservative wing of his party to get the nomination--only to lose to
some young whippersnapper for whom he had no respect. His personal
contempt for Obama comes though clearly in Heilemann & Halperin's
"Game Change." To want it so badly, and to be humiliated by someone for
whom he held such low regard, had to have a transformative effect.
Moreover, in the process of transforming himself from the 2000 maverick
into the 2008 Republican nominee, he lost his bearings. Ambition will
do that.
In my opinion, the closest analogy in the modern era
might be Hubert Humphrey, who only got the 1964 VP nomination by selling
out the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation in Atlantic
City. That ingratiated him with LBJ, got him the nomination and the
position, and the chance to run for President later. But his "reward"
for putting his ambition ahead of his beliefs was go down in flames in
1968 by supporting the Vietnam War and alienating most of those who had
been his biggest supporters in his earlier years.<<
The varied effect of McCain's great ordeal:
>>Regarding your post about the mystery of McCain --- I wasn't
around DC in the 80s, I've never met the man personally. But from my
great distance, one thing strikes me --- everybody assumes a person must
have great inner reserves of character to have withstood what he did.
But I don't know why one couldn't get through such a great trial by
being a stubborn, tetchy little bastard who resists because unwilling to
give his captors the satisfaction of breaking him. You don't
necessarily have to be nice to be a hero, nor to lack vanity, and the
very character which gives you the stubborness to resist the strongest
vise might equally make one petulant and petty once broken.
After all,
what did McCain ever want to be President for, other than to burnish his
own greatness? His history shows that his chooses his convictions
according to which will win him the most admiration, though I doubt he'd
ever admit as much to himself. For a man who basks only in glory, why
bother to conceal bitterness in defeat?<<
'He is a bully':
>>I think that what you and your readers have said about Senator McCain
has a great deal of merit. Unfortunately, there may be another, darker,
pop-psychology interpretation: John McCain is a bully. I remember how
he "came alive" in Summer 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia. He seemed
to relish the possibility of conflict with Russia. I wonder if when he
chose Sarah Palin as his Vice-Presidential running mate, he was on some
level impressed by her own eagerness to get into conflicts.
In
this sad interpretation of McCain, John was beaten up badly by George
and Karl (Bush and Rove) in 2000. Indeed, as he said to George's face,
"you should be ashamed." Now John is back in the schoolyard, looking
for weaker kids to bully. And from a bully's viewpoint, the Democrats
make great targets. In particular, as it becomes harder to persecute
women and minorities, homosexuals make great targets for bullying. This
may explain, in part, why the Senator now stands foursquare against
repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. He may not think of his behavior in
these terms. But to me, this interpretation rings true. DADT is a
fight, and Johnny likes fights, and fights with the Democrats are fights
he can win.
Interesting thoughts about the mystery of John
McCain. I think both McCain and Bob Dole maintained integrity in the
public mind and their own because of their military service, and
something went out of each of them as their party made respect for
service come to depend on political contingency. Recall the swiftboating
of Kerry and the "purple owies." Said Dole: "Three Purple Hearts and
never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds."<<
More on the effects of his ordeal:
>>You pose the question of how John
McCain could have shifted into the crabby, constricted politician we see
today.
I have some speculation about this question. As a
practicing psychologist who works often with traumatized people, I have
myself often wondered about the effects of McCain's long period of
confinement and torture while a prisoner of North Vietnam. People with
severe experiences of trauma often dissociate -- that is to say, find
themselves numbing or compartmentalizing so that outwardly they seem not
to be scarred by their experiences; however they might manifest more
subtle effects, effects that their families note well. Other people feel
every knock and jerk, real and imagined, and often withdraw, from
society or into addiction, rather than endure what seems to be the
over-stimulation of life on this earth. These are generalizations of
course, but they are not conscious choices. It's as if our neurological
systems themselves go one way or the other. I would refer you to Judith
Hermann's canonical work, Trauma and Recovery, out of Harvard.
Early on, it seemed to me that McCain was one of those people whose
numbing defenses served him well. They allowed him to get his life going
again (albeit by jettisoning one wife); they allowed him some dignity
and the respect of many. I don't know what might have caused these
defenses to collapse (running the presidential race?), but the
curmudgeon we see today looks now like a short-fused, irrational, easily
irritated, non-empathic, over-stimulated and exhausted victim of trauma
that sadly is the sequelae of a long ordeal of torture and
imprisonment.
You will appreciate no doubt that these
observations are pure speculation. But I can't help thinking....<<
The "Dole Disease:
>>Reading your article about the senior senator from Arizona, I share your
wonderment at the change in him since his 2000 loss to then
presidential candidate Bush. I began warning friends when he embraced
the persons and ideals of some of our loopier evangelical types. I
referred to his change as "Dole Disease", and suspect that at least in
part his radical changes result from feeling spurned by the electorate
when it was "his turn, dammit!" I thought Dole showed this same sort of
behavior, though not to the degree McCain has done. Then again, Dole
soon after cashed out to gain his next fame as a pusher of ED pills.
"Feeling a loss of manly power, try these!"
What prompted me to
write this morning was a politician who came to mind as example of what
you describe. Former Georgia Governor Zell Miller, I think, qualifies.
The past 11 years, I've been in Georgia and as part of relocating, I
took time to study the past & present of the place so I'd understand
it better. I don't think his change has been quite as radical as that
of George Wallace, with whom most of my life in Alabama was spent. As a
teenager in Birmingham, I remember him meting out his anger on the
legislative delegation and voters around Birmingham by halting
Interstate Highway construction 20 miles outside of the city, thus
choking and causing bypass for its industry, which was already dying,
and its people. If I correctly recall, the population of the city is
the same as it was in 1950. Much of this is directly attributable to
George.<<
Similarly about Zell Miller, in response to my request for other examples of public figures who grew angrier and narrower as they aged, rather than the reverse:
>>As a long-time resident of Georgia (and getting longer all the time),
your description of John McCain immediately brought to mind an example
of someone who seems to have traveled the very trail McCain is now on -
former Georgia Senator and Governor Zell Miller.
Miller started
off as a garden-variety Southern Democratic populist. While governor
he established the Hope Scholarship to send Georgia students (including
my daughter) to college in the state at almost no cost if you had good
grades, led Georgia to create one of the very first statewide virtual
libraries back in the 1990's, spoke on behalf of Bill Clinton at his
nominating convention, etc. Then, inexplicably, he started getting more
and more right-wing, turning his back on lifelong friends and becoming
what can only be described as vicious: denouncing the Democratic Party,
speaking at a Republican nominating convention, supporting George W.
Bush in 2004, doing voiceovers for Republican gubernatorial candidate
commercials, and contributing to Fox News. Miller's Wikipedia entry is
full of examples of how he has changed and how nasty he became.
Many of us who had known him for years couldn't understand how this
change had happened. We still don't understand it. But when I hear
McCain go off like he did on Robert Gates over DADT, I can't help but
think of Zell Miller. If this keeps up, I'm afraid they'll deserve each
other.<<
A counter-example:
>>And Lee Atwater is another in the ranks of the
expanding rather than contracting oldsters.<< [Of course Atwater never became an oldster, dying at age 40 of brain cancer, but late in his career his tone changed in the way the reader suggests.]
Others who grew narrower:
>>I can name 3 public figures that have changed like McCain-Dick
Cheney, Joe Lieberman, and Alan Simpson. They all seem to have gotten
bitter.<<
From Ta-Nehisi Coates, a nominee:
>>Courtesy of the Golden Horde, Tom
Watson. Forgot about him. Iconoclastic populist dreams of leading a
multiracial agrarian movement, loses an election, and goes on to
endorse the KKK. Amazing. There is some writing to be done about the
psychology of politicians and what popular rejection does to (some of)
them.<<
Comparisons to Henry Wallace -- and Obama:
>>1) The public figure who popped into my mind when you asked for
analogies was Henry A. Wallace (another idealist who came very close to
the presidency and supposedly spent the last years of his life cursing
the gods for getting it wrong);
2) W/o denying the importance of
the South Carolina primary or the Iraq war on McCain's psychology, the
pivotal event your readers missed, imho, was his sponsorship of the
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, the Republican base's
complete rejection of both it and him, and his subsequent volte-face.
Before this reversal I think McCain genuinely saw himself as the sort of
heroic figure who took unpopular stands, persevered, and eventually won
the respect (and even support) of his enemies. What McCain "learned", I
think, is that the bastards often win, and this broke his moral
compass.
3) I can see something similar happening to Obama. His
faith in bipartisanship seems quixotic. He must be expecting some sort
of payoff--what if it never comes?<<
It is about soul:
>>You wrote a short column about Dick Cheney with a similar observation. I can't remember it all, but
part of it alluded to growing older and having a soul.... Perhaps McCain has lost his soul? I also think though that
fundamentally, he is a damaged person emotionally. He was before his POW
days, and certainly after. He's just been lucky in building a myth
about him and sealing all the exits, most notably ALL Pentagon files on
POW's and MIA's. To me he started to crack during his recent
Presidential campaign, and he's gone downhill ever since. Sad......but
it's hard to be sympathetic to a person of privilege but without grace
toward others, especially those who don't share his views, or those who
have the least amongst us.<<
There's more, but for now that's enough. Maybe these all get at the mystery; maybe they all miss it. And maybe there is another act still left in John McCain's public evolution.