Chris Jones’s portrait of John McCain in September’s Esquire [not online at the moment finally gracing the internet with its presence] is noteworthy because of how drastically it differs from the scene Ryan Lizza painted back in February.
In one, McCain crawls back from oblivion by inviting reporters to crowd around his table, ten at a time, for the purposes of watching him eat donuts and bust his staffers’ balls while indulging in “long stretches of banter” – unscripted, of course – “punctuated by short, intense discussions of politics and policy.”
And then, having ridden this free-wheeling, back-slapping model to the nomination, he withdraws. He gets nasty, bitter, impatient, and mind-numbingly scripted. He refrains from cursing and telling dirty jokes. He worries about what to do with his hands. He fights himself and his handlers. “His first instinct was still to go with his gut, but his gut was sometimes a contradictory and unpredictable thing, and people with white teeth whispered into his ear time and again that he needed to curb his impulsiveness.”
I’m reminded of an interview I did with Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi back in 2005. He was hawking his book, Spanking the Donkey, and explaining why he was swearing off ever covering another presidential election: Because both parties, and the insipid campaign managers who populate them, would rather offer the electorate a pair of empty suits than have to manage a candidate capable of emoting and speaking candidly without prior authorization.
“The campaign,” he said, “is set up in a way that precludes spontaneity, not only on the part of the candidates, but on the part of everybody that’s involved in it – the candidates’ aides, the reporters following them around. Everybody’s locked in this bubble, and everybody’s totally paranoid.”
And so McCain, having long ago gutted Mitt Romney, is told he must now become Mitt Romney. It’s for the sake of the Party. There is no other way.
[New Yorker image]