McCain: The Iraq war was a mistake and I'm partly to blame for it

McCain, by his own reckoning, is a deeply flawed figure (another self-assessment of the sort one does not hear from Trump). In his new memoir, he concedes that the war in Iraq he fought so hard to launch and then escalate now “can’t be judged as anything other than a mistake, a very serious one, and I have to accept my share of the blame for it.” And in his 2002 book, Worth the Fighting For, the man who was nicknamed “John Wayne” McCain at Annapolis for his antic and feisty behavior admitted that his “legendary” temper, and the fierce righteousness joined to it, “has caused me to make most of the more serious mistakes of my career.” During his first Senate run, in 1986, McCain grew so tired of hearing complaints about his anger that he shouted to his staffers (“as they struggled to keep straight faces,” recorded author Robert Timberg), “I don’t have a temper! I just care passionately.”