McCain: Martyr or victim of his own ambitions?

This piece, in the aptly named SPIN CYCLE: Maverick McCain now political martyr -- Newsday.com, argues for martyr:

In the end, we got to know the meaning of 'Country First.'

First, John McCain would make sacrifices for his country as the enemy's captive in a war. Decades later his party would sacrifice him as its captive in a national election.

Considering the perils he faced against Barack Obama, the Arizona senator comes out of the election more martyr than maverick.

To me, this is the reminiscent of the many analysts who spent a considerable amount of time arguing that the lies and the nasty attacks and distortions that marked McCain's campaign -- as several fact-checking operations verify -- were not really the candidate's own doing. Sometimes they pointed to body language, and other times to their previous experience with him or the gap between his earlier statements and the conduct of his campaign. I never found those arguments convincing, mostly because of the last two words of that sentence: "his campaign." A candidate owns his or her campaign. Many may abdicate control to their money people, consultants, and party officials, but they're still making a choice. That's even more so in the case of someone who has been round for a long time -- they can't blame it on being swayed by more experienced pols or on not knowing that people working for their campaign may have their own agendas or standards.

McCain is, I think, an even more egregious case, precisely because he built his reputation on being a maverick, unafraid of going his own way and unafraid of bucking anyone who asks him to do things that violate his conscience and principles. It is beyond me how any of these pundits and reporters can not see the paradox of claiming to be a maverick and allowing others to suggest that they don't really approve of their own campaign's tactics (ignore that message added onto the commercials saying that I endorse this ad).

But you don't even need that to reject the view of McCain as martyr, running a campaign that he didn't want to run. Just look at his steady move to the right, beginning during Bush's re-election campaign, his reversals on numerous issues, and then try to make the case that he was a martyr to someone else's cause. The main hired the very people who slimed his wife and their adoptive daughter in 2000. What principle is served by that, except personal ambition? So, no, I don't believe that John McCain didn't approve of his own campaign, that he sacrificed himself to the party. But even if I did, choosing such martyrdom to one's political party would contradcit the central theme of his campaign: Country First.