RECOVERED HISTORY: REMEMBERING THE REAL MCCAIN

ED RANGER IN LA TIMES: John McCain might have saved my friends and me a lot of time, effort and money. If he had only let me know he was going to be a centrist Democrat in his third U.S. Senate term, I would never have become the Democratic nominee against him in 1998. I thought I was running against a fellow who voted with Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott 95 percent of the time. How was I to know he'd been playing possum all that time? This was a guy with ratings of zero from the American Federation of Teachers and the United States Student Association; 11 percent from moderate environmental groups and the Public Interest Research Group; 5 percent from the National Women's Political Caucus; 14 percent from the AFL-CIO. I could go on and on, but my point is not to criticize our newfound friend. I'm just trying to remind myself why the heck I spent 12 months, $150,000 of my own money and more than 150,000 miles on the road telling Arizonans what a right-winger McCain was. Perhaps it is a good thing I lost (actually I was trounced). I might have deprived the country of a valuable Democratic leader. Sure, for a Democrat, McCain leaves something to be desired, but for a Republican, I say well done and welcome to the progressive cause. I just wish he had given me a heads up to keep my head down in 1998.

MARANATHA CHRISTIAN JOURNAL, 2000 - Republican frontrunner George W. Bush said in August: "I believe children ought to be exposed to different theories about how the world started." Bush spokeswoman Mindy Tucker told The Washington Post that while the Texas governor believes that both evolution and creationism should be taught, "he believes it is a question for states and local school boards to decide." . . . Republican presidential candidates Elizabeth Dole and John McCain have stated the decision to teach evolution should be left to local school boards, while not mentioning their preference.

MEDIA MATTERS, 2007 - The most frequent guests on the Sunday shows during the past two years were Sen. Joseph R Biden Jr. (D-DE), with 38 appearances, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, with 30 appearances, and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), also with 30 appearances. And, unlike most elected officials, McCain is almost always given a solo interview rather than being paired with a colleague from the opposing party. The Sunday shows granted far more solo interviews to Republicans and conservatives than to Democrats and progressives. The top two Republicans to be interviewed solo, Rice and McCain, together were interviewed solo twice as often as the top two Democrats to be interviewed solo, Biden and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.

TPM CAFE, 2007 - John McCain's campaign has just put out a press release announcing that GOP money-man Fred Malek has signed on as national finance co-chair. That's a very important, high-level gig.

There's only one problem, though: Decades before Malek agreed to count cash for McCain, he counted Jews for Richard Nixon. Jews that were subsequently demoted - allegedly for being Jewish, that is.

Malek's past . . . is discussed in this article in The Washington Post from about a year ago. It says:

"It was also in 1971, The Post reported, that Malek was given a patently anti-Semitic order from a paranoid Richard Nixon to count the Jews in high-ranking posts in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Instead of refusing, Malek set about compiling a list of 13 of 35 top BLS employees who, he believed, were Jewish. Less than two months later, two senior BLS officials who were Jewish were moved out of their jobs to less visible posts. Malek acknowledges carrying out the disgusting hunt for Jews, but he denies having anything to do with the transfers."

Intriguingly, the McCain press release calls Malek as "an inspiring public servant who has served our nation well," a reference to Malek's service in the administrations and campaigns of Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.