I've been reading
Trail Fever, Michael Lewis' account of the 1996 campaign. In it, there's a remarkable passage about John McCain -- a McCain who seems completely at odds with the red-meat scandalmonger who heads the GOP ticket this year.
It's about McCain's friendship with a man named David Ifshin. During the Vietnam War, Ifshin was a fire-breathing antiwar activist who led a protest delegation to Hanoi. During that trip, Ifshin took part in a propaganda broadcast that, among other things, was piped into North Vietnam's POW camps -- including McCain's.
In the mid-80s, Ifshin approached McCain (by then a Senator), and apogized for his conduct in Hanoi. The apology was accepted; McCain advised Ifshin to forget it and get on with his life. The two men became friends. A few years later, when Ifshin had ties to the Bill Clinton campaign, McCain made a speech in Congress defending Ifshin against conservative partisans who were dredging up his old trip to North Vietnam.
Reading this, I realized exactly why McCain has attracted so much admiration across the political spectrum. And I wondered: where the hell did this John McCain go, and how was he replaced by this evident impostor who has gone around the country demonizing Bill Ayers and (for a brief moment) Rashid Khalidi?
The only thing I can conclude is that sheer political ambition has poisoned John McCain. He is so desperately intent on being President that he is willing to do anything to reach his goal. Like Captain Ahab, he is sacrificing everything in pursuit of his own White Whale.
