The McCain I knew

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. - I came here to see John McCain on Wednesday. I barely recognized him.

Here was the Republican presidential nominee back in a state he loves, a state that embraced his free-wheeling, warts-and-all candidacy in 2000, giving him what he has called the best experience of his life.

And yet, here, in his electoral family room, the Arizona senator stood almost motionless on a stage, reading a speech from a teleprompter. The hockey arena at Saint Anselm was only two-thirds-full, the crowd bulked up with students and out-of-state residents.

It's not just that McCain's electoral fortunes in New Hampshire are looking different this time. McCain looks different, too.

Almost nine years ago, I sat in the back of the Arizona senator's bus, bouncing all over the Granite State and across the country, covering his battle to win the GOP primary.

I was a reporter, as cynical as the rest. Still, I admired him immensely.

Not just for his bravery in Vietnam. Not just for his willingness to talk frankly and self-deprecatingly about almost anything.

He was appealing because he seemed to have come to his positions honestly, and to believe them at his core. For better or worse, they seemed to have evolved from his experiences - his insistence on the unpopular and sometimes tedious issue of campaign finance reform, for example, sprang from his humiliating role in the Keating Five scandal.

He was appealing because he seemed bound by conscience, so tightly, in fact, that he was ever-willing to catalog his own imperfections. Witness his postprimary sackcloth-and-ashes trip to South Carolina to apologize for failing to oppose the flying of the Confederate battle flag atop the State House.

"I broke my promise to always tell the truth," he said. "I will be criticized by all sides for my late act of contrition. I deserve it. Honesty is easy after the fact, when my own interests are no longer involved. I don't seek absolution." He seemed genuinely to want to move politics beyond dirty tactics and divisiveness. He was stunned by the campaign of then-governor George W. Bush in South Carolina, which he called cynical and dishonest.

"Tell me what you win when you use that kind of campaign?" he asked.

And he wanted his party to mirror his New Hampshire devotees: politically diverse, fiercely independent. When a solemn McCain gave up his run atop a Sedona ridge on a perfect March day, he seemed most proud of the progress he had made toward "making our party as big as the country we serve."

These traits made McCain substantive, and complex, and fascinating to watch. They were responsible for his broad appeal during the 2000 campaign, and for his tough reentry in Washington afterward.

They all seem to have deserted him during this general election campaign.

He has reversed himself countless times. He has embraced the president and his tax cuts and courted the religious right he once condemned as corrosive. He has hardened his position on illegal immigrants, and softened it on interrogation techniques for terrorist suspects. He has chosen a dangerously unqualified running mate. He has employed some of the same campaign tactics used against him in South Carolina, and those responsible - all to boost his political fortunes.

That empty space at the back of the cold hockey arena on Wednesday was about more than what the economy has done to GOP standing. It was about McCain, too: His once-broad appeal has withered as qualities that set him apart from other politicians have evaporated. Watching him give his prepared speech, I wondered whether the candidate I knew was still in there, muzzled by political expediency, pained by the choices he'd made.

And I wondered, too: Did I ever really know John McCain?

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. Her e-mail address is Abraham@globe.com.