The Real McCain

John McCain has reclaimed his political independence.

The Republican U.S. Senator from Arizona is suddenly working with President Obama to try and break the logjam in Washington as a way to get things - "things" being important legislation - done.  He's working with the President on immigration reform, and he's hoping to play a pivotal and instrumental role in getting a budget deal through for the 2014 fiscal year budget to avoid a government shutdown and a fatal default on federal debts already incurred.  And, he's helping Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) try to bring back the Glass-Steagall Act  to regulate the behemoth banks. 

Why is McCain doing this? Because he's a grown-up and a patriot.  He knows something has to get done to keep America from falling into a quagmire it can't get out of.  McCain doesn't like the way domestic policy, the military budget, and other issues are being handled, and he understands that the government has to, well, govern.  He even wants to help Obama closes the Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorists in Cuba, believing that the President now has a concrete plan for dealing with the detainees there.  

McCain has suggested that President Obama is acting more seriously on accomplishing something because he wants a legacy.  I think McCain wants a legacy too.  He doesn't want to be a footnote in American  history, as most failed presidential candidates are.  Bear in mind that McCain's current Senate term expires in January 2017 - the same month Obama leaves office, and also the same month a two-term President McCain would have stepped down - and McCain, who will be 80 years old then, is probably expecting to retire by then. He clearly wants to be one of those senators they commemorate with postage stamps and federal buildings, like I talked about before.  He wants to secure such a reputation while he's still in office.

As columnist Dana Milbank recently noted, it doesn't matter where the once and present maverick McCain has been all this time.  The important thing is that he's back, and just when we (and Obama) need him.