Looking Past Defeat: How Can McCain Recover?

A better man than his campaign, John McCain can now tap his old instinct for problem-solving. But it may take some time

Christopher Morris / VII for TIME

In early 2007, John McCain sat down to breakfast at a back table in the Senate Dining Room with Ken Duberstein, Ronald Reagan's last White House chief of staff and one of the few big-name Republicans to have supported McCain rather than George W. Bush in 2000. It stood to reason that the fabled Washington wise man would back McCain again. Instead, Duberstein said he was troubled by McCain's efforts to ingratiate himself with the conservative wing of their party. He cited a fence-mending commencement address McCain had given at the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and...

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