Honest John, on the Loose
With McCain, you get the good, the bad, and the angry
No mistletoe. This is the charming and disarming side of McCain. But the campaign is one of conflicts: Though he says he is "embarrassed" by and "bored" with the constant repetition of his Vietnam experience--"I mean, Jesus, it can make your skin crawl," he says--his campaign exploits it at every opportunity. The Picture, a boyish, smiling, handsome McCain standing in front of his A-4 Skyhawk before he went to Vietnam, is dispensed by his campaign in small, medium, large, and eventually, one suspects, billboard sizes. There are also clear conflicts within the man, as those who show up at his speeches find out. McCain is always introduced with a brief recitation of his war record, and he usually begins each speech modestly by smiling and saying: "It doesn't take a lot of talent to get shot down. I was able to intercept an enemy missile with my own airplane." He rarely speaks for more than 10 minutes and then takes questions for another 30 to 40 minutes. After 16 years in public office as a Republican congressman and senator from Arizona, he has a considerable range of knowledge and likes to demonstrate it, but New Hampshire being New Hampshire, he often gets questioners who disagree with him. And they can end up getting an earful. In Littleton, N.H., Jerome Danin, a textile worker, disagreed with McCain's vehement championing of free trade, saying it was driving his employer out of business. "Sir, I did not know your ambitions were for your children to work in a textile mill," McCain replied scathingly. "I would rather see them work in computers or a high-tech industry." McCain's position is not outrageous, but candidates almost never take on audience members. Candidates kiss the mistletoe of the people who attend their speeches. They are, after all, likely voters.
But McCain is nothing if not unpredictable. Mispronounce his name--as a caller to New Hampshire's National Public Radio station did recently--and McCain will snappishly correct you. But ask him about being a member of the Keating Five, and McCain will beat himself up. On NPR, a caller asked him about his relationship with Charles Keating, the savings and loan crook, who gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to McCain and four other powerful senators in return for their intervention with federal regulators. McCain got off with a wrist slap when the Senate Select Ethics Committee found that all he did was exercise "poor judgment." But McCain said on the air, "Thank you, Charlie, for that question. I was judged to have used poor judgment, but I did worse than that. I was wrong." And it affects his behavior. He now likes to admit improprieties before they happen: His wife and three young children took a vote as to whether he should run for president, and it came out 3 to 1. The opposing vote was cast by his 11-year-old son, who agreed to change it if his father, as president, could get him to the head of the line at Disney World. "So I promised him," McCain said with a deadpan expression and a shrug. "It's an abuse of office, but I promised him."
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