John McCain, no more the iconoclast

By Dana Milbank
NYT
Friday, February 5, 2010;

I miss John McCain.

I miss the McCain I sat with on a flight from San Diego to Phoenix back in 1999, when he defended his oft-ridiculed belief that campaign finance was the most important issue in America: because the corrupting influence of money in politics was preventing all other issues -- taxes, abortion, you name it -- from being solved.

"Until I draw my last breath, I will fight for it," he liked to say back then.

A couple of weeks ago, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that gutted the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance legislation, essentially destroying the cause that had been so dear to McCain.

His response: Whatever.

(More here.)