WHEN JOHN MCCAIN first started saying he’d “rather lose an election than see the country lose a war,” it was a serious aside in a self-deprecating assessment of his own uncertain political future.

He’d chuckle and deliver his reworking of Chairman Mao’s line, “It’s always darkest before it’s totally black.” He was speaking of himself, but he could just as easily have meant Iraq, to which his future had become so inextricably linked.