Perhaps McCain's best bet is simply pretending the 2004-2008 McCain simply didn't exist. He could re-embrace progressive taxation, endorse diplomacy with U.S. adversaries, support Roe v. Wade, and thumb his nose at the religious right. If someone asked about the switch, McCain could honestly say, "Why, I've believed all of this for years!"

bingo. what's more "mavericky" than becoming President Obama's most loyal supporter in the Senate?

Two words: who cares?

McCain made his choices, he got down with Sarah Palin and rolled around in the Rovian mud of vicious, lying smears, inciting hatred and violence among the worst elements of the ignorant, weak-minded, neo-brownshirt right-wing extremist cult of hatred, and now as a result, he is washed up and irrelevant. I couldn't care less what happens to him or what he does.

Oh, how refreshing it would be if the Repubs, for once, could be honest with themselves. The American electorate just hit them betwen the eyes with a 2x4 on Tuesday and they still can't accept that they are their own worst enemy. If they would step back far enough and focus on their Party they would realize that since 2000 they have performed dismally. They have given us fear, mistrust, incompetence, perversion,obstruction, criminality, and division. And yet, they still don't seem to grasp that we've just had enough of their BS. They truly are a deluded bunch. John McCain chose to be one of them and paid the price.
Now, all they want to talk about is how he can , once again, change his "colors". To do what? He has clearly shown us what he truly is. A loser , just like the rest of them.

Why does McCain care? Does he think he's going to get a shot at 2012 again or something?

He should worry about his own state and his own Senate re-election race that's coming up. Maybe he should forget about his image and just try to do some productive things in the Senate for the next few years. I know, I know - a shocking suggestion, but the man has been all about running for the Presidency for so long, perhaps he should be thinking about his legacy in the Senate and in his home state instead.

While I think McCain is doing the only decent thing he could do by trying to re-enter the civilized political arena, I'm not buying it from him.

Remember, this is a guy who hinted his opponent wanted to teach toddlers sexual behavior, was in favor of infanticide, and was a communist/terrorist/fascist. You don't come back from that precipice and say, "Sorry, it was just politics, yuk yuk."

It's like a guy whose been caught trash-talking his date with the other guys in the men's room, and then going back to her and saying, "just because your brother told you he overhead me talking about tha blow job, it doesn't mean I don't still love you."

Sorry, I wouldn't take him back.

McCain who? Oh, you mean that guy who became obsolete on Tuesday.

The GOP seems to be going in a different direction.

I'd be surprised it McCain runs again.

McCain pretty clearly has some serious health problems that surfaced every now and then. I really, really doubt he runs for reelection and think he may retire form the Senate before then. He is a guy who loves attention and the limelight, and with Obama as Pres he is going to get neither. Plus, he probably has to worry about holding on to Cindy now that she won't get to be First Lady. She will go back to AZ for good, and may cast her eye on greener pastures.

To quote the sage: "Fool me once, shame on-shame on you. Fool me--you can't get fooled again"

Bush/McCain

Maybe he should reinvent the wheel. That might work better than trying to make people forget all of the video showing what a flip flopping, mud slinging, hate mongering arse he became...

Actually, McCain is in a position to atone. He could try to lead a moderate insurgence within the GOP. He can point to the smoldering wreckage of his own campaign as to what the future holds if the far right continues at the helm.

The country would be well served by a republican party that embraced reason, compromise and pragmatism over rigid ideology and relentless invective. In other words, he could make good on his claim to put country first.

Could he pull it off? I tend to doubt it. But, it couldn't hurt his deeply tarnished reputation.

Backing off from the precipice isn't the image that came to mind for me. McCain went off a cliff in this campaign; his rehabilitation will be more like climbing back up that cliff.

He went so far as to personally voice over robocalls in his home state. I don't think he is going out live the time it will take to revamp his image.

I think he burned far too many bridges to ever live down this election. He infuriated his own with the Palin pick, he was telling the world Obama wasn't a real American for this or that reason, his only ally is the religious right, and I doubt they trust him, who is behind McCain, a few journalist and politicians that know him.

Big deal, the guy is going to become a leper real soon and should just except the fact that he destroyed his reputation and go home.

He is 72 years old. He should serve his term doing what he feels is right and then leave politics. He doesn't need it and I am sure he could always get a friendly audience outside of politics.

Apparently those that 'really know the man,' consider him the victim in all of this. Barack Obama's wildly successful campaign forced those running McCain's campaign to steer him in this aweful, un-McCainlike direction, right?

The reality is is that most people hadn't read his books and weren't sold on him, for these people he's gone to far and there will be no rehabilitation of his reputation.

In this scenario, those close to him are the big issues - rehab by focusing on that.

I believe McCain was many of these things BEFORE he ran for President. His list of lobbyist campaign aids and friends is long. His petty and divisive personality is well known amongst those who work alongside him in Congress. His lack of knowledge on almost everything but the military is acknowledged even by himself and his temper and flip-flopping, regardless if there's a crisis, is known by all.

Who cares? I am not sure what McCain ever did that gives him this image of a good man. His career is littered with examples of his disdain for his constituents-especially women and minorities. His relationships with lobbyists and special interest groups is well known-beginning with Keating and continuing from there. On the one issue he should have been able to remain committed to, torture, he easily and adamantly changed his views to suit his own selfish needs.

Get rid of this man. His campaign was just an extension of his career.

John McScrooge told Marley's ghost to "fuck off;" he labeled the Ghost of Christmas Past an Islamofascist; he accused the Ghost of Christmas Present of being Un-American; he accused the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-come of being underqualified. Finishing things off, he accused Tiny Tim of being a Socialist---and now that his political future has been eternally consigned to the Infernal Regions, some nattering nunnyhammer of a fool wants to come along and discuss the Path to Atonement?

God himself would find it difficult to invent that much stupidity. Making the Universe in 7 days? Maybe---but blindly forgiving a pathetic, cowardly hatemonger? I don't think so.

Here's your chain of judgment, Johnny-boy. Try it on for size....

SecularAnimist took the words out of my mouth: who cares?

From this day on John McCain is a non-entity. He is Michael Dukakis. He is Bob Dole. He is Walter Mondale.

Backing off from the precipice isn't the image that came to mind for me. McCain went off a cliff in this campaign; his rehabilitation will be more like climbing back up that cliff. Posted by: artsmith

If one is to believe everything in the RollingStone profile, this campaign was perfectly in character. His life and careers really haven't been much different from Shrub's.

I think McCain serves out his term and will retire in 2010.

Sorry, SecularAnimist. He's worse than Dole. His reputation is ruined, and rightfully so.

He's gonna retire from the Senate and in a few years Salter will write a book which savages Bush, Palin, Schmidt, maybe a few others. He'll make one last round of the media and by that time all will be forgotten and he'll get to be a media darling again. From then on he'll be a semi-frequent guest on MtP and will once again be a "straight talker" who will also have a bit of a "sage" aura.

I wouldn't serve Bushburger or a BigMacCain burger to my dog without irradiating it first. I'd be concerned that some plasmids floating around might transfer some of the genes and ruin a perfectly good pet.

Hey? What did you you do with the real Steve Benen! I want my 12:00-on-the-dot daily round-up!

It appears likely that Jeff Merkley has won election to Oregon's US Senate Seat - his lead is 39K and growing as the rest of the votes are counted. That's 55 seats for the Democrats.

As someone who volunteered for Jeff, this is so SWEET!

Buh-bye Gordon Smith!!!

In fact, Merkley is giving his acceptance speech right now!!!

One of the most remarkable things we've seen over the past eight years that George W. Bush and the Conservative Movement have been in power, is the steady stsream of senior level insiders who have made a very dramatic and public break with both the Bush administration and conservatism generally. The list includes the former Treasury Secretary O'Neil, two people from Bush's faith-based initiative project, Richard Clarke the anti-terrorism czar, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department repudiating the so-called torture memos, and even the president's own chief spokesman who apologized for lying to the country and making it impossible to govern responsibily. And in the campaign we had a number of high profile Republican defectors to Obama, head-lined by Colin Powell.

It's obvious that something has gone really, really wrong with the GOP in the last 20 years, and that something is the party's takeover by the ideological factions of the far right. George Will is right. The GOP is not a national governing party anymore, but a narrow, regional, reactionary faction, rooted almost entirely in the South.

It had a huge effect on John McCain. He had to become someone he wasn't in order make use of this Frankenstein Monster that Bush and Rove had built, or at least enabled and empowered. The narrow GOP base knew enough to pick McCain as the only Republican who stood any chance at all to win. But once picked, the base lacked the maturity or wisdom to stand aside and let McCain be McCain. You could almost see his contempt for his own party on election night in the way he frowned at the audience as they kept interupting his gracious concession speech with their chorus of boos each time Obama's name was mentioned. That's not a serious political party in a mature democracy. It's a rabble, and a scary one at that.

The whole point of the 2008 election was to put this kind of narrow, bitter and angry politics behind us. And it's not "hateful" to point out that the Republicans ran a hateful campaign, as Joe Scarborough and other conservatives have been trying to do. Now that McCain no longer has anything to lose, he can perhaps help himself by adding his voice to all those other Republicans out there who are distressed by what their party has become. He should disown whatever parts of the Republican Party he cares to. He started to do a little of that with his acceptance speech at the convention, when he noted that Republicans had gone to Washington to change things but had been changed for the worst themselves. In short, he needs to engage in a little more straight talk.

One has to understand that McCain circa the 1980s was a very typical conservative candidate. The McCain of 2000 was certainly a highlight, but it's not clear that that's who he really was. Especially since he reverted to a very typical conservative candidate for 2008.

Don't fret about McCain's future. He'll return to D.C. and yuck it up with his colleagues in the Mutual Protection Racket, AKA US Senate.

"That's not who he is. But that's the campaign that he chose."

BULLSHIT. That IS who he is. That is what he does when EVERYONE is looking. What is he doing when no one is looking?

I am so damn tired of making excuses for that miserable daddy-issue asshat. Just go away, John. You are a FAILURE.

So which one is the 'Real' McCain?

Is he the forthright upstanding straight-talk maverick... or was THAT persona the real act?

Don't fret about McCain's future. He'll return to D.C. and yuck it up with his colleagues in the Mutual Protection Racket, AKA US Senate. Posted by: lou

I wouldn't count on that. After Ted Stevens, he's reportedly the most disliked member of the Senate, and that includes within his own party.

I'm betting the long term narrative will be that he ran an honorable campaign because he didn't bring up Wright. No need for another version if this sells.

As many have noted, the worst thing to be in GOP politics is a loser. There is nothing that McCain can do now, except fade away......fade away.

Retiring from politics and occasionally making public appearances on Fox News is my prediction.

Sure, he COULD atone and try to resurrect his maverick brand, do what he thinks is right as opposed to what his handlers and puppetmasters tell him is right. Those on the left might forgive, but they won't forget. And if he DOES atone, he'll lose anyone on the right who may have warmed to him over the campaign; they warmed to him in the first place because he abandoned his mavericky principles and became a toady for the Right. They won't repsect him if he becomes his own man again.

So like I said, he'll retire and every so often pop on Fox News. They'll make a point of still calling him a maverick, even as he continues to carry water for the GOP in a fashion that'll make Joe Lieberman jealous. Before he retires, he'll be a thorn in the side of Obama's Administration, threatening to filibuster everything that comes down the pike for having too much pork, no matter what the bill is. And he if he ever does break ranks and vote for something truly important like SCHIP or reducing troops in Iraq or nationalized healthcare or even an increase in the minimum wage, he'll hide (how very un-Mavericklike) behind his constituents. "I don't believe in this bill," he'll say, "but the people who elected me by and large do believe in it and I'm here to represent them, not myself, so THEIR will be done blah blah blah."

Sticks to the right? He'll be a big fish in a small pond.

Try to atone? Fish out of water.

Not many options I can see.

The politicians we support are never as good as we think they are; their opponents are never as bad as we paint them to be. Campaigns, political and military, have traditionally been about exaggerations, demonizing the opponent. The brilliance of Obama is that he did not play by these rules - and we all won.

I do hope McCain can untarnish his reputation - and working with Obama on issues of mutual interest is one good way to do so.

Other than Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman, I don't think McCain HAS any friends in the Senate.

He's yell at, sworn at, and finger-chested all the others.

Cindy prefers to vacation in California, while John likes the ranch in Sedona. Don't expect to see them together much in the future.

I hope Cindy divorces his ass and leaves him to live on his Senate salary and to rent a room in the Capitol Hill townhouse of some oil company lobbyist.

I do hope McCain can untarnish his reputation - and working with Obama on issues of mutual interest is one good way to do so.~ Posted by: jen f

Sure. McCain can start by initiating plans to get us out of Iraq, and then move on to reversing his support for the long list of debacles delivered to Obama by Bush/Cheney and the GOP. That would be Mavericky. Also. My friends.

@ Jack H
"I'm betting the long term narrative will be that he ran an honorable campaign because he didn't bring up Wright. No need for another version if this sells.
I don't know where you live but in Florida the 527's gave us nonstop Rev Wright in the last 3 days. Also One with Mohammed Atta's driver licence
implying that Obama was going to give all illeagle immigrats driver's licenses. I didn't hear any repudiation from McNasty and Mooseface

Maybe he could redeem hisself by sharing his "I know how to get Osama bin Ladin" secret. That's about all he's got left. After all, he's "passed the test" and he knows how "to do these things". Put up or just shut up and go away.

I say let him bend over backwards to rehabilitate himself. He could be usefull. Let him try to salvage his reputation and join moderate and sensible Republicans. It would further divide the Party. The extreme right would push farther right, embrace the idiotic Palin (or similar). McCain is still a marquee name. He could be a usefull wedge. The longer the Republicans are at war with each other the weaker they'll get. The extreme right wing will get scarier and more separated from the mainstream. Let them eventually whither and die as a backwater freak show.

Open the door and let John McCain in from the cold. It could be helpfull.

McCain should have never gone with the Rovian negativity and hired Rove underlings.

Beyond the promotion of John Sydney McCain, I doubt if Senator McCain has ever had any beliefs at all. I think his entire political persona has been a PR construct from beginning to end. There IS no "real" John McCain and there never has been.

McCain should retire and tend to his greenhouse of grudges. He ran a red-baiting, race-baiting campaign with special emphasis on the gimmicky and picayune. And lost. Go home, McCain. In your sunset years, try to learn some introspection.

34 people have so far denigrated the notion of McCain reinventing himself. Who gives a damn about McCain's image? He is 72 he ain't gonna run again in 2012.

If McCain and his posse (Lieberdick and Lindsey) discard the reflexive partisanship and active engage in making the tax system more fair and closing the deficit (as McCain did back in 2001) and dealing with health care and climate change, Obama will have no problems finding enough support with the Maine girls and Spectre to pass the sort of left centrist kind of policies he will want anyway.

Ignore the politics and optics. It would be a huge boon for the country if the Republicans would act like grownups instead of being a reflexive roadblock to anything that might reflect well on Obama.

It is never to late to do the right thing.

One additional thing to keep in mind is that in 2000, McCain never ran a general election campaign against Democrats, he ran against Bush.

Now, in 2000, I remember being instantly turned off by the idea of Bush as president, even before he officially announced. His candidacy sounded like a big money project with him as a figurehead.

So McCain looked good to me as someone to defeat Bush in the primary.

McCain also looked good in this year's primary, at least until he clinched.

Then Democrats and independents got to see another side of McCain as he started attacking them.

It is difficult to forgive McCain after this campaign. It was lowlife on so many levels, but his choice to put Palin a step away from the Presidency was reckless and a deep insult to this country.

He has proven himself unworthy. There is no reason to think that McCain's post-2000 "maverick" persona was real. When things were on the line, as they were in the recent campaign, McCain gave the USA a big "F**k you!"

I predict the 72 year old melanoma survivor won't be around long enough for his reputation to recover from the fear & smear mongering campaign he's run. This IS the real John McCain.

Despite the sycophantic press that wants to cozy up to a tuff POW to make up for their own inadequacies.

got to agree with economanic. if mccain was ever serious about "country first" he can step up in any number of ways. he can undo some of the damage he and sarah silly did during the campaign; he took a small step toward that in his concession speech. and he can work with the administration to get legislation passed. since it's highly unlikely the dems will get to 60, obama and the dems will need some republican votes to get things done. the eyes of history, will always see mccain's ugly presidential campaign first and it will always stain him. but he's still a member of the senate and he can still be of service to his country.

I agree that it's too late for McCain to regain the credibility he might once have had, but he does seem to care sincerely about his own public perception, and that's something that Democrats can and should use to press him into a cooperative posture over the next four years. With McCain willing to work with the Obama administration and the Democratic wing of Congress, the lack of a filibuster majority might not be such an impediment to getting a lot of Obama's agenda passed. McCain clearly enjoys having his ego stroked; let the Dems do a bit of that and I think the next 4 years will go much more smoothly.

What SecularAnimist said at 12:16 PM. The campaign McShame ran was unforgivable. A gracious concession speech doesn't come close to equaling months of dirty, divisive campaigning. Who gives a damn if he "atones"?

@ Ted Frier: It's obvious that something has gone really, really wrong with the GOP in the last 20 years, and that something is the party's takeover by the ideological factions of the far right. George Will is right. The GOP is not a national governing party anymore, but a narrow, regional, reactionary faction, rooted almost entirely in the South.

In short, the GOP == the John Birch Society.

Steve, if there is any atoning to be done, it is
to be done by your side, for all the batshit
insane crap you've been putting out for the past
eight years.

It has been an utter disgrace. And it means
that you don't have a leg to stand on if/when it
starts coming back at you now.

I predict (and have predicted) that McCain will retire from the Senate within 6 months.

He has no reputation left. The GOP has no love of a loser, and not of a 'maverick' that doesn't toe the GOP line. Whatever bipartisanship he might have hoped for was buried in a landslide of slime from his campaign.

He's also old, worn out from the campaign, and with health issues. The GOP would like him to hold on to avoid possibly losing a seat. However the GOP didn't exactly help McCain in this election, but were more of a rotting albatross around the neck. So I think McCain will just say "fuck you, GOP" and retire.

McCain's easieast way of atoning would be to actually follow the Slate program while already deciding not to run for re-election. (If he does run, he risks a second straight butt-kicking if he's up against Napolitano.)

That said, Snarki, no change of him resigning before the next election.

he can "atone" all he wants....and try and reclaim the mantle of a moderate, but it would be a wasted effort...as the bat-sh!t gop party leadership drifts even further to the right...there's nobody left who'll listen....

the days he lost the election

***the day he decided to campaign towards the right instead of the center

***the day he let his aides foist palin on him

***September 15th......"the fundementals of the economy are strong"

lights out

say goodnight, gracie...

john r- I didn't say it was true that Wright was never brought up, just that that would be the narrative. Long term narratives frequently are based in myth not reality in case you hadn't noticed.

"Say goodnight, Gracie"

Only problem with that - Gracie was a very bright gal who played dumb.

Double Talk is not very bright and tries to appear smart.

He reminds me of a drunk from a bar - The day after wrecking the bar due to his drunkenness, so many say, "Ol'Joe is really a nice guy, when he is sober". DT became drunk with power and spoke his inner thoughts; now, he is sobering up and the barriers are coming back. A person shows their true colors when they are drunk and their guard is down. This is akin to a drunk using the "N" word, but, upon sobering, he switches to saying African-American. Sorry, John, once out of your mouth, the deed is done.

McCain is a case study of what blind ambition does to you. Coupled with his subpar resume (very low in his class, lousy pilot), and a tremendous sense of entitlement (as evinced by the frequency of his POW references in the campaign, which were a shorthand for "you owe me this, America"), and you get someone who spent the past 10-15 years angling to be President only to get frustrated by two younger jagoffs who stole all his thunder and beat him at his own game.

How to rehabilitate that? Why bother? The 'maverick, straight-talker' image was only there as a means to an end. Now that the end is no longer possible, what incentive does he really have to bring it back?

Cindy's still a fairly youthful and attractive woman. It's not too late for her to ditch the old codger for a young maverick...Todd Palin, perhaps.

He gets Ian McEwan to ghost write the book for him. It is called Atonement Again.

McCain is no different to any politician, much though his fanbase in the press corps would like to think otherwise.

He's mavericky, high-minded and open to the press when he thinks it will get him attention.

He's off-limits to the press and indulgent of the most reprehensible kind of campaigning when he thinks it'll get him elected.

His whole life has been a series of hop, skips and jumps aimed at keeping him forever in the spotlight.