I didn’t realize it at the time, because I have done several profiles of McCain, read his life story in his books and books about him, and by the time he spoke on Thursday night, had heard it repeated ad infinitum in every meeting of a state delegation (to which McCain’s campaign sent his fellow POWs from the Hanoi Hilton). But most of the public (and even a TNR editor who writes sometimes about politics) didn’t know most of the story–maybe, I would guess, five percent of the voting public knew what McCain had endured and had survived. And I think that story–combined with theme of “country first” and the commitment to “reform”–created a credible gap between McCain, on the one hand, and Bush and the Republicans on the other. By the convention’s end, he was running as an independent–a “maverick,” in his terms.