For Discussion: Boiling Down John McCain MOREHEAD, KY (WEKU) - When all is said and done, John McCain's best skill is self-promotion. It's also his most important commitment. No politician has been more relentless about self-promotion over the last fifteen years than John McCain. McCain has appeared on Sunday talk shows more than any other politician. Michael Kinsley formerly of the Crossfire show used to joke that McCain and Joe Lieberman were 15 minute guys who could be ready to be on air within 15 minutes of an emergency call.

Perhaps the strongest sign of John McCain's devotion to self-promotion has been his eagerness to engage in constant conversation with the media. Talking non-stop with the media is stressful in the extreme for most politicians, but McCain was almost completely open to the media for years. It takes an unfathomable commitment to promoting oneself for almost Straight-Talk. John McCain has that commitment.

Outside John McCain's self-promotion, he only has a few authentic moments. There's his conduct as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, his commitment to campaign finance reform, and his aggressive neo-conservative foreign policy views. In a life of very little honesty, McCain's commitment to expansive use of the American military is sincere.

The best way to understand John McCain's speech is that he took full advantage of his scarce moments of authenticity for the purpose of self-promotion. By far the strongest point of an otherwise bad speech came when McCain told of living for something "larger than himself" while he was a prisoner of war in Hanoi. According to McCain, he learned the inadequacy of "living for self" from the efforts of his fellow prisoners to help him. That's when he began to "live for country." It was very compelling and McCain did it well

But I imagine that one of the most compelling moments of John McCain's life came when he (and his speechwriting alter-ego Mark Salter) figured out how to employ the selflessness of McCain's fellow prisoners on behalf of McCain's efforts to promote himself. That's what must have spoken most profoundly to John McCain.


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