David Broder dedicates his column today to John McCain, whom he urges to restore “adult leadership” to a fracturing Republican party. Broder would like to see McCain resurrect the “reputation he established for independence — for being his own man, no matter what the pressures” and find key points of bipartisan compromise with Barack Obama.
But as time passes — and particularly in the wake of his tack rightward in his just-clinched Arizona primary fight — McCain’s independent “maverick” streak is looking less like the norm and more like an aberration in a fairly conservative political career. The maverick days began in the mid-to-late 1990s, when McCain was considering a run for president, and ended fairly soon after the 2000 election (after which McCain seemed to conclude that being mavericky was not the path to success in the modern GOP). Broder may be pinning his hopes more on a man of his imagining than the real John McCain of today.
P.S. In my post yesterday about McCain, I misrendered the name of his Democratic challenger. It’s Rodney, not Mark, Glassman. I apologize for the error.