Surprise! John McCain “Never Considered” Himself “A Maverick”

The Google search “John McCain maverick” yields 496,000 results. Exactly one third of UrbanDictionary.com definitions of the word “maverick” mention the 2008 Republican presidential nominee. Fox News montage presenter Sarah Palin used the word to describe her running mate countless times on the campaign trail. Well, all of these people are wrong, because now McCain is telling Newsweek that he never thought of or sold himself as a “maverick.”

The astounding declaration, made in light of McCain’s heated Senate primary battle against talk radio personality, Jack Abramoff buddy and Tea Party favorite J.D. Hayworth, is hidden in a goldmine of an article in this week’s Newsweek by David Margolick, where he argues that McCain’s primary troubles are indicative of an internal identity crisis pitting his political interests against his life-long image, one that those he allowed to get too close cling onto dearly:

Many, many years ago she’d competed in a beauty pageant, Palin declared, as women howled (and a few men growled) approvingly. McCain would surely win the talent and debate portions of any such contest, she went on, but no way would the Washington elite and “pundints” and “lame-stream media” ever crown him “Miss Congeniality”! “He’s never been a company man, he’s never been one to just ‘go with the flow,’?” she crowed. For there was at least one thing she’d learned in her years of commercial fishing in Alaska: only dead fish do that.

Unfortunately for Palin, Margolick continues, “‘Maverick’ is a mantle McCain no longer claims; in fact, he now denies he ever was one. “I never considered myself a maverick,” he told me. “I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.” Yet here was Palin, urging her fans four times in 15 minutes to send McCain the Maverick back to Washington.”

The article is seasoned with its fair share of uncomfortable references to McCain’s war past– “Even a man who can’t applaud quite properly can still form a fist”; “is this evolution simply the latest example, dating back to his days at the Hanoi Hilton, of McCain doing whatever it takes to survive?”– but nonetheless McCain claiming he never adopted a moniker that appeared in countless TV ads raises some serious red flags and probably deserves the harsh scrutiny. Margolick’s major concern about McCain’s turnaround is that it makes it impossible to predict how the Senator will behave if reelected, since his past directly contradicts both his words and the demands of the present. One thing is to claim that, in an era where the executive branch is further left than any administration since Lyndon Johnson, McCain would be taking a more right-wing stance to hold up against the current political climate. That is not what McCain is saying– he is expressly shedding off decades of old political skin to keep up with the times, and for Arizona voters, there is no telling what they will find underneath.

This post has been edited since publication.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.