According to Cliff Schechter, author of The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn’t the Senator from Arizona is a maverick only if it suits his purpose to get even. Schechter manages to write the entire piece without mentioning his former running mate once, a feat more media should attempt.

What does he want? Revenge. For what? Being born.

This is the way famous gunslinger Doc Holliday answers equally famous lawman and good friend Wyatt Earp’s inquiry – in their depiction in the movie Tombstone – into why their sworn enemy, Johnny Ringo, is such a misanthrope.

Sadly, this description would be equally accurate in explaining the actions of another Arizona transplant filled with endless rage: Senator John McCain.

I first encountered the seething side of McCain when I was writing my 2008 book, The Real McCain, which was critical of him while pointing out a then-controversial fact, one no longer in dispute among those who lionised him back then. Namely, that the Led Zeppelin-groupie relationship he then enjoyed with many in the media was based on a faulty premise.

McCain’s temper is fairly well documented and his judgment has called into question and Schechter makes the case judgment is driven by one thing, the need to get even.

But the driving force for McCain has been pure vitriol and spite. When I first pointed out this inconvenient truth in my book, that many Republicans, including some willing to go on the record, were sure McCain was motivated by demons and not decency, I was criticised or dismissed in many quarters. Yet, it was obvious to me back then that his battles with fellow Republicans and Democrats had become personal, crusades for the eternally perturbed Abe Simpson stand-in.

I broke two stories in my book that spoke to McCain’s temperament, that he had physically assaulted a member of his own party after taunting him (Republican Representative Rick Renzi) and had called his wife a very not-safe-for-work term of non-endearment. In perhaps an emblematic McCain moment, during a policy meeting with a fellow Republican, McCain “called the guy a ‘sh—head.’ The senator demanded an apology. McCain stood up and said, ‘I apologise, but you’re still a sh—head.’”

There’s a reason the dude was nicknamed “McNasty” in high school.

So when others still saw McCain’s breaking from President Bush on taxes, healthcare, the environment and gun control in the early 2000s as a sign of “independence,” I tried to point out what I had learned: He was just doing it because he hated Bush for beating him in the primaries. And when others saw his loss to then-Senator Barack Obama and thought he’d work with Obama to display his maverickyness once Obama was sworn in, I warned that in all likelihood we’d see McCain once again do his best Judge Elihu Smails impression.

Read the full piece here.