THE P.O.W. CELEBRITY—Longtime McCain friend and consultant John Weaver has said that John McCain was a media celebrity when he first got off the transport from Vietnam in 1973. After a couple of years in physical rehab, McCain parlayed his celebrity status into a position as a Navy liaison officer to the U.S. Senate in […]

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ALASKA GOVERNOR SARAH PALIN DELIVERED a terrific speech in St. Paul on the penultimate night of the Republican convention in St. Paul, demonstrating to an enthusiastic crowd and to critical television viewers that she is a natural politician, with a wit that some commentators say recalls Texas governor Ann Richards (whom I knew well and […]

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“I Gave at the Office”—When former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed failed to show up at an Atlanta fundraiser he’d helped organize for John McCain, he was doing the senator a favor. McCain knows all about Reed’s role in the theft of $88 million from six Indian tribes between 2000 and 2002. Both men know […]

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ON A JULY NIGHT IN 1983, Wyoming Congressman Dick Cheney stood in Red Square with Tom Downey, a Democratic House colleague from New York. “There were just the two of us, and I asked him what he was thinking,” Downey told me three years ago, when I was working on a book about Cheney. “I […]

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ETHANOL MANDATES HAVE BECOME a defining issue of the presidential campaign. And that’s a problem for Barack Obama. For many years, John McCain was an ardent opponent of ethanol. During the early part of the current presidential campaign—or at least while he was campaigning in Iowa—he was an advocate. Now, McCain’s an opponent again. Obama, […]

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