Death of a maverick

The political autopsy of John McCain has already begun.

Four days remain, of course, and he could still pull this out. But even more than the daunting gap in swing state polls, it's the rabid infighting and utter gloom in Team McCain that's the dead giveaway that Nov. 4 will be a brief and bloody night for Republicans.

Two narratives have arisen as to why McCain will lose. His supporters claim that with a tanking economy and President Bush's record low popularity, McCain was sunk from the start. No other Republican could have made it a contest.

Less charitable folks say McCain has run a terrible campaign, plagued by bickering staff with competing agendas from the start. His message bounced all over the place (which sadly is inevitable when more moderate candidates compete in GOP primaries and then shift to the general election).

But it was the Wall Street meltdown proved fatal. McCain seemed determined to prove Barack Obama's charge that he was erratic (suspending the campaign, diddling around Washington, going to the debate anyway) and the impression has stuck.

There's truth to both storylines. But I think the ultimate reason is more organic.

McCain wasn't allowed to be McCain. He didn't run the kind of campaign he wanted, leaving him forever to wonder what if. What if I'd picked Joe Lieberman as VP? What if I'd run a clean campaign? What if I ran on the issues I valued most and palled around with the press?

In a way, McCain will probably regret this more than his actual defeat. Because there's nothing quite like compromising your core and going down anyway.

Let's make this clear. This wasn't a murder of McCain; it was a suicide. McCain is the captain of the ship and didn't have to hand the reins over to traditional GOP advisers like Rick Davis and Charlie Black nationally or Chuck Yob in Michigan. If he wanted to run like a true maverick, he should have kept his conscience, John Weaver, and hired Mike Murphy, who wasn't afraid to challenge him.

But McCain ran like a candidate afraid to lose from the get-go. It was only when he got back to basics in New Hampshire, tirelessly holding town halls in hamlets for a dozen people at a time last summer, that his campaign was reborn.

What ultimately greased his way through the inhospitable GOP primary season was that the far right was uncharacteristically fickle about its anointed candidate. Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and even social liberal Rudy Giuliani duked it out while McCain stitched together a series of unlikely wins.

Once he grabbed the nomination, he floundered for four months, failing to campaign hard even as Obama and Hillary Clinton threatened to obliterate each other and take the party with them.

McCain clearly thought he'd face Clinton, whom he respected, and always viewed Obama as a cocky usurper. But his campaign allowed him to telegraph his disdain, which he most notably did with his sighs and eye rolls at the debates. Better advisers would have drilled Mac to be more happy warrior, less grumpy old man.

His contempt for Obama also allowed him to OK vile robocalls linking him to terrorism, run sinister ads questioning his patriotism and fall just short of calling him a commie at rallies. McCain can justify this to himself because Obama ducked town hall debates and broke his public financing pledge.

But the truth is that McCain is running the sort of bare-knuckle, whip-up-the-basest-elements-in-the-base campaign that Bush thrashed him with in 2000. The lesson McCain seemed to learn from that was that nice guys finish last. Better to sell out than sell yourself short.

Which brings us to his pick of Sarah Palin. Reports in the New Yorker and other publications clearly paint McCain as being irascible and demoralized when his advisers foisted Palin upon him. The senator wanted a truly bipartisan, national security ticket with Lieberman.

McCain was told in no uncertain terms that he would shatter the party, that pandemonium would reign at the convention with a far right exodus. Well, so what? The Dixiecrats walked out of the Dems' bash in 1948 and most formally seceded by the '60s. That helped the Democratic Party redefine itself as one dedicated to equality and human rights.

McCain would have captured the holy grail of independents and stolen away moderate and conservative Democrats.

Look at the GOP right now. The civil war is happening anyway. McCain could have been the leader of the new pragmatic, centrist party. He could have taken control of the party platform on climate change, drilling, gay rights and abortion for starters. Instead, it's even more radical than it was under Bush's tutelage.

Now McCain is being pilloried by the right-wing media for killing the party (ha!) while Palin is canonized and groomed for the glorious resurrection in '12. Good luck with that.

If McCain had followed his instincts, he still might have fallen short. But at least his political epitaph would have cathartically read, "I did it my way."

A statesman for Obama

When I met Jim Leach for the first time, protesters were shouting down a speech he gave at the Iowa City Public Library under a hand-painted banner that read, "Killer Leach."

It was during the heady days of Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution in 1995 and the mild-mannered, moderate congressman was an unlikely foot soldier. But it was the first time in his 19-year career that the GOP was running the show and he dutifully towed the party line. He truly believed Republicans could clean up Washington.

So when I caught Leach's speech at the Democratic National Convention Monday endorsing Barack Obama, I let out a little gasp.

My former congressman chuckled that as a veteran of five Republican National Conventions, he'd never expected to be at a DNC, either.

"When I was asked to speak, it startled me at first and I had to think about it for a moment," Leach said during a phone interview Wednesday. "But I made a commitment and I decided to go all out."

That commitment is to Republicans for Obama, also led by Sen. Lincoln Chafee. Both were swept out of office during the 2006 Democratic tsunami, but they interestingly haven't bought the idea that maverick John McCain will restore their party. Leach believes a record number of Goldwater Republicans and independents will cross over.

Most Obama backers on tee-vee look to be 18 if they're a day and gush about their personal connection to him. But there was no come-to-Jesus moment with Leach, who admits he doesn't know Obama well.

Dispassionate Princeton professor he is, he neatly laid out a historical and geopolitical case for the Democrat better than anyone I've seen, masterfully weaving in the ideals of Jefferson, Lincoln and Reagan with Obama's.

"The change Barack Obama is advocating is far more than a break with today's politics," Leach said in his speech. "It is a clarion call for renewal rooted in time-tested American values that tap Republican, as well as Democratic traditions."

Leach swats away the idea that the freshman Illinois senator is less ready to be commander-in-chief than McCain, whom he deeply respects.

"There's no doubt that John McCain has served in Congress longer than Barack Obama," says the man who was in Washington longer than both combined. "But it's important to look at judgment over experience and I am impressed by Barack's judgment."

Though he voted for the Gulf War, Leach was one of the few Republicans who didn't back the Iraq war, which he calls "a disaster." He's also troubled by the growing gulf between rich and poor and the middle class that's been left behind. What won him over to Obama was his non-ideological approach to issues and strong cast of bipartisan advisers, which he pointedly says is a break with the Bush administration.

But the most powerful part of his eight-minute monologue Monday was a devastating, and obviously tortured, indictment of the Republican Party he still calls home:

"The party that once emphasized individual rights has gravitated in recent years toward regulating values. The party of military responsibility has taken us to war with a country that did not attack us. The party that formerly led the world in arms control has moved to undercut treaties crucial to the defense of the earth. The party that prides itself on conservation has abdicated its responsibilities in the face of global warming.

"And the party historically anchored in fiscal restraint has nearly doubled the national debt, squandering our precious resources in an undisciplined and unprecedented effort to finance a war with tax cuts."

Unfortunately, the Iowan's measured and thoughtful soliloquy was drowned out by cable's talking heads and skipped by the networks, although once-Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman's GOP coming-out party next week will likely net great fanfare. Pundits are praying he puts on the same kind of loopy show that Dixiecrat Zell Miller did at the 2004 RNC that spooked small children and family pets.

But the reality is that Lieberman, though an eloquent and impassioned McCainiac, is swimming against a tide where Republicans are fleeing the party in droves. And the country is moving past the middle and gently leftward. Leach thinks it didn't have to be that way.

"If we had stayed true to our core principles, we could still be in control of Congress," he told me.

Leach, who considers Dwight D. Eisenhower to be the greatest GOP president of the 20th century, could have pushed back against the tide in '06 and probably hung on to his seat. But he nixed an anti-gay mailing and inflamed the religious right, who then worked against him. They're the same folks who call him a turncoat today.

Leach can still rattle off details about that Iowa City event 13 years ago, down to the obnoxious sign. Though the liberal college town is known for its sometimes raucous protests, he clearly didn't relish being the target. He wanted to dialogue with the demonstrators; they wanted to shriek slogans stolen from the '60s.

He deserved better then and he deserves more respect now. But being a statesman is often a thankless job.