The maverick is back: John McCain on the offensive

{mosads}One rightist Republican recently called McCain a “quisling,” a strange insult to the war hero naval aviator. I suspect the president Americans have long wanted was the maverick reformer McCain, who ran for president in 2000, which is why I urged a few friends to donate money to McCain in 2000 while I preferred the man Americans chose to be president that year: Al Gore.

The maverick is back, and this is good for America, good for the Senate and good for Republicans if they have the sense to know it, which some do but many do not. Americans widely despise Congress today, including House Republicans. They scorn the gridlock and obstruction that McCain is wisely working to end.

The maverick is back. McCain could be the cavalry of common sense arriving to rescue his party from becoming a demographic black hole that alienates everyone except old conservative white men, and rescue the House and Senate from the black hole of historic public disapproval.