Maverick

Americans romanticize mavericks - the lone, rugged individual who does "the right thing", no matter the consequences. It's a nice myth in the movies, where the maverick always turns out to be right in the end and everybody is grateful to him for having saved the day.

In the real world, though, it's not so simple. I've worked with mavericks before, and you likely have, too. You know, the person who walks into the meeting after you've spent months working on a proposal and negotiating among the various parties to get a workable solution, and just blows the whole thing up. It's usually not because this hero has thought of an important angle you overlooked, but more like a three year old throwing a temper tantrum. He blows it up because he can, and that's how he gets attention.

John McCain has long had the reputation of a maverick, and he had fooled a lot of people into thinking he was the wise, brave, rugged individual who put the country first. After all, he was a POW, and that experience unquestionably required those attributes. But if you think about your experiences with mavericks, you'll realize that another word for maverick is 'asshole.' Being an asshole is probably a good thing when you're a POW, but as John McCain has displayed this week, in the regular world, mostly you end up pissing everybody off.