The media want him to be president. It's a bad idea.

The Man Who Should Be King

It is this arm, this right arm, that North Vietnamese torturers worked over for days in a hellhole called the Plantation, till it was broken and bruised and lacerated. It is this arm, this right arm, that is still stiff, still scarred, still bent. And it is this arm, this right arm, that the avaricious barons of tobacco, who sell death and call it commerce, think they can twist, think they can break, think they can make reach out to them, open-palmed.

But, you see, they don't understand that this arm has a man attached to it. And they don't understand that the man is Sen. John McCain, who is allergic to their blandishments and threats, just as he is allergic to the cozy, sleazy compromises of this dark city, just as he is allergic to the mendacious hypocrisies of politics as it is practiced in late-20^th century America. For Sen. John McCain is the last _____ (man of honor, hero, honest man, saint ...) in American politics. And perhaps, if we are very lucky, he is our next president ...

Political journalism, like all professions, depends on the formula--the ritual "Newt is doomed" or "Clinton will survive anything" stories. During the past year, there has been a significant addition to the Washington media formulary: the John McCain profile. It can be boiled down to this: He was our bravest Vietnam prisoner of war. Now he's the only senator courageous enough to tell the truth. He is battling evil cigarette lobbyists and Senate money-grubbers. He may lose, but he won't quit. In 2000, he'll run for president. We don't deserve someone this honorable. Vote for him.

E squire, the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Time, and countless newspapers have sanctified the Arizona Republican in this way. Mike Wallace has said he would consider quitting 60 Minutes to aid a McCain 2000 campaign. As far as the national media are concerned, McCain can do no wrong. When his tobacco bill was shot down, the New York Times declared the defeat would only burnish his reputation. When he got caught telling a dumb, nasty about Chelsea Clinton--the kind of crack that might cripple the career of someone else in Congress--he apologized immediately, was forgiven by the president, and the love-in continued. (Click for a brief sidebar on how McCain uses apology as a career strategy.)

It's easy to understand why McCain has been anointed the media's favorite presidential hopeful. He is irresistible. In a Senate populated by grasping automatons, he behaves like an actual human being. Probably because of his five and a half year imprisonment, he is impatient with the euphemisms and lies of politics. (Bob Dole once said of him, "You spend five years in a box and you're entitled to speak your mind.") McCain cracks jokes, dishes dirt, and generally mocks the hypocrisies and failings of his colleagues (and himself). The more his colleagues spin and position themselves, the better he looks.

McCain also has the appeal of the maverick. The press loves Republican traitors, and McCain's willingness to buck his party bosses on campaign finance and tobacco makes great copy. (If he were a Democrat leading the fight against tobacco and campaign corruption, no one would care.) There is something heroic about a politician who seems to act against his immediate self-interest.

McCain benefits, too, from the general swoon about his history. He is an awesome man. He doesn't need to talk about the war: Reporters, most of whom never served in the military, are paralyzed by him. His indisputable bravery and honor inoculate him against charges of base motives.

And he makes himself phenomenally accessible. According to Arizona reporters, he's ill-tempered and vindictive toward the local press; but he charms the socks off national reporters. He interrupts family vacations to appear on cable news and rises at ungodly hours on foreign trips to do TV interviews. He has a knack for flattering reporters. Other politicians obviously stage-manage media encounters. McCain, by contrast, is transparent. He confides in reporters. He holds conversations with his children in front of them. He asks them for advice. (Tip to pols: No. 1 way to ensure a favorable article is to ask the reporter for advice.)

But the McCain hagiography is not harmless. It misleads the American people, and it will disserve him if he does run for president. He isn't just an honorable, truth-seeking hero, a selfless iconoclast. He's a schemer, a politician, a calculating populist who has built his career on sexy, attention-getting issues. He is opportunistic. He arrived at a convenient time in the tobacco fight: He had no strong feelings about the evil weed, and he became the tobacco scourge only when Republican leaders asked him to shepherd the bill through the Senate. He adopted campaign finance reform only after he was tarred in the Keating Five scandal several years ago. Others who've devoted years to campaign finance and tobacco have watched McCain get credit as the heroic martyr, the patron saint of lost causes.