The imperfect hero

He opposed a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage, saying it was an issue more properly decided by the states. He has voted to expand stem cell research and to raise fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, has pushed for criminal background checks of gun show customers and -- with Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a conservative's bogyman if ever there was one -- has supported a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

He has alienated colleagues in both parties by waging war on congressional perks -- big things like pork-barrel spending (Alaska's infamous "bridge to nowhere") and smaller things like close-in parking at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport for federal officials and gifts and meals from lobbyists.

And he has changed positions, sometimes blatantly. He voted twice against the Bush tax cuts, questioning their morality, but now says they should be made permanent. He was against offshore oil drilling; now he's for it.

"From a political point of view, he is really very courageous," said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican who can be found so often on the campaign trail with McCain that he jokes he's being held hostage.

Brutalized in the 2000 presidential race by pro-Bush forces who spread rumors that the Vietnam War had made him mentally unstable (untrue), that he'd fathered an illegitimate black child (he and his wife adopted a Bangladeshi orphan) and that his wife was a drug addict (a dependence on pain killers after back surgery sent her to rehab), McCain struck back at the Republican base and conservative evangelicals -- whom he called "the forces of evil" and "agents of intolerance."

He was so alienated from the GOP that he allowed Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry to court him as a possible running mate in 2004. He and Kerry had worked together in the mid-1990s to resolve questions about Americans who remained missing in action in Vietnam, paving the way for the United States and Vietnam to establish diplomatic relations.

"I was approached by a McCain operative at my house and told 'John McCain's interested in talking about it,' " Kerry said during a recent interview in his Senate office. "So we talked about it." Nothing ever came of it.

That same year, he began what many believe was a calculated move back to the fold, in order to position himself for this year's race. A photograph of McCain embracing the president at a Bush reelection rally in Florida is often used by former fans as Exhibit A that he has sold out.