Looking Past Defeat: How Can McCain Recover?

sat down to breakfast at a back table in the Senate Dining Room with Ken Duberstein, Ronald Reagan's last White House chief of staff and one of the few big-name Republicans to have supported McCain rather than George W. Bush in 2000. It stood to reason that the fabled Washington wise man would back McCain again. Instead, Duberstein said he was troubled by McCain's efforts to ingratiate himself with the conservative wing of their party. He cited a fence-mending commencement address McCain had given at the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and his hawkish stand on the war in Iraq. "I told John the right wing never wants to be satisfied; they're professional whiners," Duberstein remembers now. "They are never happy. So don't kill yourself trying. They will never trust you, no matter what you do for them. John looked at me... [read full story]