what was the first incidence of mccain being called a "maverick"?

and when did it become conventional wisdom? lexis nexis pplz im counting on yall - dude keeps calling himself the original maverick, was there some o.g. maverick flashpoint where this was solidified? friends of mine have claimed the nickname is self-applied - is that true? did it come from his books? was it (as suggested on nro) from voting against going to lebanon? how did he become a maverick?

Pretty sure this was an Election 2000 thing, but I don't have Lexis Nexis so I can't confirm.

From his Wikipedia:
"The term "maverick Republican" became a label frequently applied to McCain, and he has also used the term himself. In 1993, McCain opposed military operations in Somalia. Another target of his was pork barrel spending by Congress, and he actively supported the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, which gave the president power to veto individual spending items. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that the act was unconstitutional."

But really it's just cause he's an old hag and 'has been in wars and shit.'

i found a May 30, 1993 Washington Post article about Clinton's campaign finance bill where the five Republican senators who are hospitable toward the bill are referred to as mavericks. McCain is one of them, but it's not used exclusively for him.

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/80724

The following is an excerpt from "Free Ride: The Media and John McCain" (Anchor Books, 2008) by David Brock and Paul Waldman.

Perhaps no word better defines John McCain in the public imagination than "maverick." It's a word that, more than "straight talk" or "moderate" or "reformer," has come to occupy a seemingly permanent place next to the senator's name in the media. It is also distinct from those other modifiers that have come to identify McCain. As critical as the idea of ideological moderation is to the Myth of McCain, his status as a maverick is not about what he believes but about who he is-something far more important in the personality-driven world of today's politics.

In later years, when asked to name his proudest moment in Congress, John McCain would go all the way back to his first year in the House of Representatives to point to a case in which he stood against a Republican president. In 1983, McCain voted against Ronald Reagan's decision to deploy U.S. troops to Lebanon. "I do not see any obtainable objectives in Lebanon," he said at the time, "and the longer we stay there, the harder it will be to leave."43 McCain sees the act as a defining moment: the neophyte lawmaker breaking ranks with his party and his political hero. (The actual vote was 270-161 in favor of deployment; McCain was joined by twenty-seven Republicans in opposition.) The dissenters would later be vindicated when a truck bomber slammed into the Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 U.S. servicemen and precipitating a U.S. withdrawal. "It demonstrated to me that you really have to do, at the end of the day, what you fundamentally know is right," McCain told the National Journal years later.

At the time, McCain's decision to object was barely noted (a New York Times story on the House vote buried a quote from him at the bottom of its story). McCain evidently sees his 1983 vote as the moment where his political identity as a maverick began to form, but that reputation did not really take hold until much later. In fact, McCain's early years in Congress did not attract much national attention, nor did they evince much evidence of what would become the Myth of McCain. It wasn't until the late 1980s that the press even began to take notice of his self-proclaimed penchant for breaking with party orthodoxy. Early in his career, McCain was seldom described as someone too principled to be bound by party loyalty or the momentary dictates of partisanship. The first time anyone referred to him as a "maverick" in the press appears to be a February 1989 States News Service story, which quoted Dan Casey, then-executive director of the American Conservative Union, saying about McCain, "He is a good conservative but somewhat of a maverick."There was no explanation of what made him a maverick, other than the fact that the group had given him a rating of merely 80 out of 100. Other such descriptions are few and far between. Another story from 1989, in Newsday, described him as a Republican expected to "break ranks" on Dick Cheney's proposed budget cuts to the F-14D aircraft program. But apart from these faint glimmers, there was little indication of the McCain image that would eventually form in the press.

In 1992, McCain was one of three Republican senators to vote for Democratic campaign finance reform legislation (all the Senate Democrats except two voted in favor). The bill called for the provision of taxpayer funds and other incentives to urge candidates to abide by voluntary spending limits; it was vetoed by then-president George H. W. Bush, a veto that the Senate failed to override. In 1993, McCain again cast himself in the role of party rebel in the campaign finance debate. In deliberations over an identical measure to the one Bush had vetoed in 1992, McCain proposed amendments that caught the attention of the media. McCain offered one amendment that barred candidates from using campaign money for personal expenses such as vacations, mortgage payments, and clothing purchases, among others. Another amendment pushed for the campaign reforms, if enacted, to go into effect in 1994 instead of 1996, as originally proposed. Little noted was that McCain's amendment was identical to one that his Arizona colleague, Senator Dennis DeConcini (D), was set to introduce to the Senate, before McCain beat him to the punch by a day-a move that won McCain credit for the amendment.

The early returns to these maneuvers were encouraging. In 1993, the Washington Post noted that McCain was one of five "maverick" Republicans for his work on campaign finance reform legislation. Another Post reference two months later offered a continuation of the theme, describing McCain as a "conservative with maverick instincts."But if the media had taken a closer look, talk of McCain as a maverick may have been a little premature. As news stories at the time made clear, the 1992 campaign finance bill was preordained to be vetoed by Bush, making it easier for McCain and his fellow Republican rebels to back it. That motive became starker in 1993 when the Clinton administration, pushing a nearly identical bill, was told by McCain and his fellow "renegades" that they would support a Republican filibuster of the legislation. Predictably, Clinton expressed his dismay at the "rebels" who changed their tune when faced with a bill that might actually become law. "The thing that particularly troubles me about this one is that several Republicans voted for a bill not unlike this last year which contained public financing," Clinton said. The Associated Press reported that Republican moderates admitted to voting for the original bill only because they knew it would be vetoed. Eventually, McCain and his band of mavericks broke with their GOP colleagues on the filibuster, but only after the bill was gutted to remove most of the public financing features of the measure. The compromise legislation "left almost no one happy" and was derided by advocacy groups like Public Citizen and US PIRG as watered down. The bill eventually died a quiet death in the House. McCain's maverick gestures, though revealed to be less than substantial under scrutiny, nonetheless left their imprint on the media.

it's because ppl have heard of him

okay there's a July 1997 Washington Times article that quotes William Safire as having called McCain the "patron saint of mavericks" in the New York Times. i don't know why the Times column didn't turn up in my search,t hough.

Liberties;
Droids and Ricks

BYLINE: By MAUREEN DOWD

SECTION: Section A; Page 11; Column 5; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 725 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

I have a notion about 2000. It is shaping up to be a thoroughly unmillennial contest between androids and mavericks, or droids and ricks.

On one side, a bunch of Chinese terra cotta soldiers at attention in dark suits and red ties: Al Gore, Bill Bradley, Lamar Alexander, John Kerry, Elizabeth Dole, Dan Quayle, Jack Kemp (a chatty droid), Dick Gephardt (a droid who thinks he's a maverick), Steve Forbes (a droid who is the son of a maverick) and George W. Bush (a droid who is the son of a droid).

On the other side, careering about zanily: John McCain and Bob Kerrey (war heroes who spin to the beat of a different drum), Paul Wellstone, Rudolph Giuliani (a maverick with the appearance of a droid), Newt Gingrich (a has-been maverick), Pat Buchanan (a maverick with an inhuman face) and John Kasich (if wearing Tweety Bird ties can put you out there on the fringe).

I called Senator McCain to inquire into his maverickism, but he had flown to Fiji for a long holiday. Christmas in Fiji? Why can't he be like President Clinton, and do a poll to find the most advantageous place to vacation to woo swing voters? Why can't he be like Bob Dole and vacation in New Hampshire?

Unlike droids, mavericks are not afraid of reporters. They come across as real people, sometimes excessively real. After a reporter called the unpredictable Bob Kerrey "Senator Pluto," he phoned the reporter and laughingly identified himself as "the Senator from Pluto."

Mr. Gore has a charming side, but he is so paralyzed by the fear of slipping up and dropping the prize he has waited for so patiently, it is harder and harder for him to loosen up and let fly. I hear tell he has entertained reporters on flights by balancing baseball bats and spoons on his nose. Now he has become the Prince of the Droids.

We say we want someone funny and spontaneous who speaks his mind and takes bold stands and makes tough choices. But those sorts of pols are often unelectable -- either because they make the party pros angry or because they seem too flaky or because they ask the voters to eat their peas.

Everyone agrees that the campaign finance system is disgraceful and needs to be fixed. Yet Mr. McCain and Russell Feingold are the loneliest guys in Congress. The Republicans think Mr. McCain is a sanctimonious traitor, and they were furious when he and Senator Feingold wrote to Fortune 500 C.E.O.'s asking them to stop contributing money to both parties.

Although they enliven campaigns and force the front-runners to cope with difficult ideas, mavericks do not usually get to be President. (In William Safire's New Political Dictionary, the entry "maverick," derived from the name of a Texas cattleman of the 1840's who refused to brand his cattle, cites as references: "See LONER; MUGWUMP.") Ronald Reagan was a rarity, an upbeat, popular maverick.

Mavericks are always teetering on the edge of idiosyncrasy or extremism. Look at Eugene McCarthy and Jerry Brown. In politics there's a fine line between ideals and moonbeams, refreshing and Pluto. Mavericks date sexy movie stars and sultry Brazilian models. Droids marry ketchup heiresses. Mavericks can be as ambitious and conniving as other pols, but they also genuinely seem to care and they're willing to take some risks.

Yet the most promising politicians are the ones who are boring enough to seem safe, the ones who reshape themselves and take positions that will appeal to the largest number of people. Droids are kind and gentle panderers.

Mr. Gephardt has transformed himself into a labor populist, to stake out ground in counterpoint to Mr. Gore. Mr. Forbes has transformed himself into a moral preacher. Like George Bush, he has hardened his position on abortion to please the religious conservatives. The man who once cared only about a flat tax now hectors against partial birth abortion. The man who once thought the Christian Coalition flaky now assiduously woos it.

After eight years of a Presidency shaped by polls, after eight years of Cuisinarted, predigested, pretested policies, maybe the public will want something fresh and original.

On the other hand, maybe it won't. Bill Clinton may have set the right precedent for a time when politics is so plastic and uninspiring. He is not an android and not a maverick. He is a droid who pretends to be a rick. And it works.

dowd column is from December 1997

Man, I wish I still had Lexis-Nexis access.

i will use my access for any random things ilxors want looked up! it's more fun than the other things i use it for.

there's a big gap between the first article from '93 where Republicans who don't automatically oppose Democratic legislation are referred to as mavericks and the late 90s where it looks like it gains some traction--people in political life are calling McCain a maverick 1997-99, it looks like, though attribution is sloppy. there's a 1998 Financial Times article that starts by saying: "Two words - neither often employed to describe US legislators - are used with great frequency when John McCain's name is mentioned on Capitol Hill: 'Maverick' and 'principled'." so i guess it's about beltway conventions?

gains some traction as an exclusive epithet for McCain, I mean

Man, I wish I still had Lexis-Nexis access.

ask and you shall receive:

February 16, 1989:

McCain was called "somewhat of an enigma" by Dan Casey, executive director of the ACU. "He is a good conservative but somewhat of a maverick," said Casey.

McCain, who laughed at the comment, said he would agree with the statement.

also wtf @ Dowd

It's interesting how whenever Sarah Palin uses it now it's "the maverick."

he's not just any maverick but the maverick, the "one"

I wish I still had Lexis-Nexis access

Lexis or Factiva would be so nice. :(

probably about 10% of the reason i continued dating a girl who worked at cnn was that i could use lexis nexis at her house

the quintessential maverick

Yesterday I helped someone at work who claimed to have worked with Lexis Nexis all the time in a law office, but had trouble understanding anything about our library databases. Kinda sad really.

it looks to me like the "o.g. maverick flashpoint" for McCain in the legit news media and not just, like, the Washington Times was his failed tobacco bill from '98: "In an impassioned speech on the Senate floor today, just before the the tobacco bill he had pushed was returned to committee, he insisted the vote was not about taxes (some Republican leaders tarred the bill as an old-fashioned "tax-and-spend" package), but "whether we're going to allow the death march of 418,000 Americans a year who die early from tobacco-related disease and do nothing." from the ny times

that + the McCain Feingold bill that had already happened+ the fact that it was rumored he was going to run in 2000 got him branded.

http://www.photobasement.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/nosocialest.jpg

they managed to spell obama correctly I suppose

Ever since he visited this crappy Idaho/Utah/Wyoming gas station!

Straight talk express CRUSHINATE u!

http://monsterblog.lzsportsource.com/images/coverages/saltlake07/before_maverik.jpg

That has the be the LEAST extreme $2 combo I've ever seen advertised under Abbot's link.

There is only one Maverick

http://www.linguakonzept.de/Praxis/Wild%20West%20Heroes/heroes/maverick.jpg

What's the schtik of being called a maverick anyways?

mav·er·ick (mvr-k, mvrk)
n.
1. An unbranded range animal, especially a calf that has become separated from its mother, traditionally considered the property of the first person who brands it.
2. One that refuses to abide by the dictates of or resists adherence to a group; a dissenter.
adj.
Being independent in thought and action or exhibiting such independence:

http://sports.popcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/mark-cuban.jpg

Get that out of here.