James Wolcott: There's only one Maverick, and his name is James Garner

I'm watching "maverick" John McCain on Fox News Sunday.

I hereby declare Operation Reach-Out over. There's no reasoning with these madmen. Certainly not this insatiable warrior.

At the time I thought my friend Camille Paglia might have been a wee tad hyperbolic when she wrote for Salon during the 2000 campaign:

"The TV camera does not lie: Just as it showed from the get-go that ex-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was a nervous, shifty, sweaty, petulant mental adolescent, so has it exposed McCain over time as a seething nest of proto-fascist impulses. Despite his recent flurry of radiant, P.R.-coached grins, McCain has the weirdly wary and over-intense eyes of Howard Hughes and the clenched, humorless jaw line of Nurse Diesel (from Mel Brooks' Hitchcock parody, 'High Anxiety')."

In another Salon column, Camille described McCain as a "choleric hawk," "a manipulative waffler with a mediocre legislative record."