I understand John McCain—he wants to be the bad boy who becomes the hero.  He is a Peter Pan, a boyish old guy with adult responsibilities who wants to chuck them all for NeverNeverLand.  That is how I explain his otherwise inexplicable (or at least irrational) choices.  Sarah Palin (forGodSake) as Veep.  “Suspending” his campaign to ride off to rescue the nation from Henry Paulsen.  Joe Lieberman as keynote speaker.

This is also a good explanation for his radical lurches into insulting and misogynistic riffs on his wife and his (female) campaign aides.  To his wife—“At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c**t.” To his aide, Brooke Buchanan—“bipolar”, “a drunk”, “someone with a lot of boyfriends.”  Peggy Noonan and even less reactionary mediaheads write this off as the “fun-loving” McCain, the “boys on the bus” goodtime Charlie, the “maverick.”

Truth be told, I understand and so do a lot of guys.  Off-handedly insulting, then profusely apologetic or enragedly self-righteous because my insult was “just in fun.”  It’s comforting to be able to claim the moral high ground of being misunderstood.  I am sure Peter Pan would cop the same attitude.

This even shows up in McCain’s political stands over the years.  He has the reputation of a “maverick” but he is only a “maverick” when ca cause excites him, when he sees some way he can throw a bomb and come out without a scratch.  McCain is less a maverick than a bomb-thrower.  He takes a contrary position, sometimes just for the hell of it, sometimes because he is mad, sometimes on the strength of personalities, but never on well thought out principle.  He throws bombs at other people’s ideas or comes up with his own bombastic ideas mainly in order to portray John McCain as “his own man”, “nobody’s stooge.”

Even in the Senate, this is fairly innocuous.  After all, an occasional bomb thrown into the crowd does not mean that you can’t vote 90% of the time with the rest of your party.  They will forgive the occasional bomb as long as it’s mainly a stinkbomb that you are throwing.

But that gets to the point.  A bombthrower in the Presidency is dangerous on a nuclear scale.  Throwing an occasional bomb, even if it is only a stinkbomb, has far more serious consequences in the Presidency than for a Senator from a western state known mainly for cactus and unrelenting sunshine.  And that brings me to my second point, which surprised me but makes sense.

I think McCain wants to lose the Presidential election.  Maybe he won’t admit it to himself and certainly not to others, but I think he knows that the job of President is hard and demands steadiness and forethought. It demands that you put your mind in gear before your mouth is in motion.  McCain is good at talking but not at thinking and not at sticking to a position.  He is chimerical and he does not like to be told what to do.  He really didn’t want to win the Republican nomination, at least not if it meant compromising whatever few principled positions he has taken.  Unfortunately for him, his Republican opponents were so weak and lacking in principle themselves that not even the “base” could stomach them.  So the “base” stayed away in droves and McCain was nominated despite himself.

Now he has what he wants—top Republican dog.  Now he has shown the Bushes, the Roves, the Falwells that he is a “maverick” who can win, a bad boy turned hero.

Again unfortunately for him, nomination is just the first step and this is where he falters.  After nomination, he has to swallow a Republican platform written by the most conservative members of the “base”, a platform that trashes McCain’s own views on immigration and abortion, that makes no pretense to be “maverick.”  And as the nominee, but not yet the “boss”, McCain has to swallow.  It’s as if Peter Pan came to London with Wendy and shed his green tights for a suit and tie.  A disappointment to himself and to his lifelong image of himself as someone who can thumb his nose at authority (his father the Admiral, the Naval Academy, the Vietnamese, the Arizona Republican Party, the President) and get away with it.

That is how I explain the otherwise inexplicable.  McCain doesn’t really want to be President.  Peter Pan doesn’t want to grow up.

Oh and by the way, even Peggy Noonan agrees: “He doesn’t need the presidency. He got what he wanted. So now he can coast.”

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