Honey, they shrunk the candidate. It has been a sadness to watch John McCain, a towering figure in US politics, diminished by the campaign trail and by the errors he has made along the way. The nominee who stands before America today is a very different creature to the prospective candidate I interviewed for The Spectator in 2006. McCain’s whole mission then – and one which made him identify with David Cameron – was to stretch a hand out to non-Republican voters, to ditch the Bush-Rove strategy of wooing the “base” above all else.
Lest we forget: McCain was one of the first politicians of the Right to engage sensibly and proactively with the issue of climate change. Though a hawk with the sharpest claws, he understood completely how grave was the damage wrought to America’s moral authority by Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and fought hard with the White House to outlaw the torture of terror suspects.
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