Sen. John McCain campaigned for president as "the original maverick.''
Now the four-term senator from Arizona is campaigning for reelection as no maverick at all.
"I never considered myself a maverick," McCain says in an interview published by Newsweek, "I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities."
That's an interesting turnabout, considering the campaign ad that McCain aired during his bid for the White House in 2008 (see it above.)
And it's a "striking comment in light of the number of times that the former Republican presidential candidate has embraced the term;,'' CBS News notes. "At a town hall meeting in Michigan in September of 2008, he said, "Sarah [Palin] and I don't agree on every issue -- what do you expect of two mavericks? To agree on everything?"
As recently as March 26, at a campaign rally for McCain in Arizona, Palin asked Arizona voters to "send the maverick back to the United States Senate'' as McCain stood by smiling (below). She explained that McCain's "maverick" status hasn't won him any friends ampong the "Washington D.C. elite machine."
McCain, the maverick, was the Republican who worked with Democrats on campaign finance reform, immigration reform and other issues, the one who rallied independent voters in his first bid for the GOP nomination in 2000 with a stunning New Hampshire upset of George W. Bush, who went home to Texas to recalibrate and returned to the campaign trail as the "reformer with results'' and claimed their party's nomination.
Bucking his own party's presidents is what had helped earn McCain the "maverick'' label - the Washington Post called him that in the early 1990s, as McCain staked a reform-minded agenda in the Senate. And it was McCain who, after defeating Bush in New Hampshire in 2000, declared on his way South: "We have sent a powerful message to Washington that change is coming.''
By the 2008 campaign, when McCain finally won his party's nomination, he had become the "original maverick.'' Ultimately, Barack Obama eclipsed him on the "change'' front.
"The most important thing that McCain can do in this campaign is reoccupy that change and reform territory," Todd Harris, who worked for McCain in 2000 but wasn't on the 2008 campaign payroll, said back then.
But now that he faces a tough fight within his own party once again -- this time for nomination for another term for a Senate seat that he has held since 1987 -- McCain maintains that he never was a maverick.
It reminded us of that juncture when McCain faced Joy Behar on The View during the last campaign ."You used to be more of the maverick,'' Behar told McCain, "then you sort of turned.''
"In what way?'' McCain asked.
"You became much more lockstep, I think, with your party, with George Bush's policies,'' Behar told him. "I don't see the old John McCain who used to really buck the system as much.... I understand why,'' she said, "you want to get elected...''
The audience laughed, and McCain did, too.
