In another brilliant column Peggy Noonan wonders if McCain has already won the prize he really cares about:
And there is another problem that is bigger than all of that, and he is
going to have to think himself through it. And that is that there is a
sense about his campaign that . . . John McCain has already got what he
wanted, he got what he needed, which was to be top dog in the
Republican Party, the party that had abused him in 2000 and cast him
aside. They all bow to him now, and he doesn't need anything else. He
doesn't need the presidency. He got what he wanted. So now he can
coast. This is, in the deepest way, unserious. JFK had to have the
presidency—he wanted that thing. Nixon had to have it too, and Reagan
had to have it to institute his new way. Clinton had to have it—it was
his destiny, the thing he'd wanted since he was a teenager.
The last person I can think of who gave off the vibe that he didn't
have to have it was Bob Dole. Who didn't get it. And who had a similar
lack of engagement in terms of policy, and philosophy, and meaning.
Read the whole thing. Her exercise in clairvoyance at the end is the most plausible prediction of how this campaign will play out I've seen.
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