For years now I have been convinced that John S. McCain III, never the sharpest knife in the drawer by most accounts, confuses being a U.S. Senator with being a Duke in the House of Lords somewhere around the time of the Tudor dynasty.   This latest is just one more example of his attitude of how dare the voters criticize special people like himself and make them grub around raising money to get reelected.
 
I bought into the media positive assessment of McCain as a conservative outsider until I read The Nightingale's Song by Robert Timberg.   He has never been a conservative, but is rather a throwback to the era when aristocrats steeped in tradition believed they were entitled to run things. And spare me this political outsider crap.  The last posting assigned to this son and grandson of admirals was as the U.S. Navy's liaison officer to the U.S. Senate.  Civilians doing the same work are commonly called "lobbyists".  
 
McCain evidently liked the company he was keeping as liaison officer. He met his second wife on a junket and several Senators participated in their wedding.  Shortly thereafter he resigned from the Navy and ran for Congress as such a shameless carpetbagger that he actually makes Hillary look good by comparison. Not only had he just become a resident of Arizona, but he moved twice with Arizona in a handful of months.  The original plan had been to run for the new seat created in Arizona  after the 1980 census.  Shortly after the newlyweds bought a house in where they figured the new district would be drawn, a senior Congressman in a 100% safe republican seat announced his retirement. So he and put one house up for sale and bought another. McCain won the multi—candidate primary on name recognition as a war hero.  Pity the poor voters in that District.  I recall, Timberg reported that McCain talked about running for the U.S. Senate on the night he won that primary.
 
The only thing that keeps me from despair with McCain and Hillary Clinton being the early favorites for the 2008 presidential race is the knowledge that early favorites seldom get the nomination.
 
Rosslyn Smith   4 30 06
 
P.S.  Timberg's book notes that in 1980 the Washington press corps was not exactly pro—McCain.  His first wife, disfigured in an auto accident while he was a POW,  took a job as Nancy Reagan's scheduler in the 1980 primary season to help get over her broken marriage .  Many in the media following the campaign thought she had been done dirt and took her side, openly poking fun at the great hero's marriage to the much younger, uninjured and very rich Cindy.