WHATEVER else the presidential candidacy of John McCain may or may not accomplish, it has already been responsible for one notable development. In the way he has presented himself, and in his rhetoric, McCain has brought a significant ideal back into political discourse that had more or less gone into retirement—or perhaps only on a well-earned vacation— in the last few years. That ideal is authenticity.
As Mark Steyn recently observed in these pages, the feeling that McCain possesses or embodies this quality is what mainly accounts for the love affair the liberal media have been having with a candidate who, given his consistently conservative record on abortion, gun control, and the gay-rights movement, would normally be anathema to them. Or, to borrow Steyn’s more pungent characterization of their normal attitude: “You gotta be nuts to believe this stuff.” Thus far, however, McCain has not only been awarded a free pass by the liberal journalists covering and commenting on him; he has managed to make them even fonder of him by being “nuts.” For that, too, is taken to be an element of his authenticity.
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