Live in Salt Lake

I'll be on Salt Lake City's NPR affiliate KPCW at 9:10-9:30 Mormon time to discuss John McCain. You can listen from afar at this link.

Speaking of the Republican frontrunner, some interesting projection in today's Boston Globe from McCain's co-author and alter-ego, Mark Salter:

Salter said that Obama's candidacy is grounded in a "messianic complex" and that the press has treated him as "god-like." "Obama's message," according to Salter, "is 'I am something extraordinary—gaze upon me and everyone will be great. By the mere fact of electing me, we will have transformed the stale politics of the United States.'"

The Globe article, written by Sasha Issenberg, who also penned a perceptive piece a few months back about the elusive shadow of Barry Goldwater hanging over this election, contains another classic McCain tell:

"I do not seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save my country in its hour of need," McCain said.

As I discuss in my book, whenever McCain volunteers an absolutist statement about what he is not, chances are non-trivial that he's actually revealing something about what he is. For instance, he's been flirting with the possibility that his campaign is divine destiny for quite some time now. For instance, in a McClatchy News article last June:

"I know this sounds schmaltzy and maudlin and everything like that. I'm not sure—have no idea—whether I'm intended to be president of the United States. But I know I'm being kept here for a reason, and that is to serve."

Or this, to the Christian Science Monitor:

"There is no logical reason for me to be on earth, if you look at my life, so I should spend this time trying to serve a cause greater than myself," says McCain in a Monitor interview.