John McCain's Sad Campaign

Two years ago, John McCain was running for president. Now, he’s trudging around Arizona just trying to keep his job, the New York Times laments. Reporter Jennifer Steinhauer has obviously followed McCain around the trail, but he won't talk to her. So she’s left to observe his strange ordeal, as he’s hassled by constituents over parochial issues and his shifting immigration position. “We all know what happened after 9/11. Why didn’t you close this border down?” yells one spectator. Another cries, “You’re afraid of JD Hayworth.”

Gone is the jovial McCain of the past, and the energy of the presidential candidate. He seems “engaged in a battle within himself,” Steinhauer writes, trying to take the high road at times, and at others flashing the anger still simmering from his 2008 defeat. He won’t mention Hayworth by name, and when pestered to debate him he scoffs. “I have a day job,” he says. (More John McCain stories.)