Almost ten years ago to the day, Sen. John McCain announced to a large crowd in Nashua, New Hampshire, the start of his first presidential campaign.

Why, NBC's David Gregory asked, does it seem more difficult to govern today?

McCain thought for a moment. "The media-cable input, 24 hours a day." He added, "one of the things that has changed is the news cycle itself. ... We are literally in an instantaneous news cycle."

This charter member of the instantaneous news cycle hereby welcomes you to The First Draft of History, an effort to speed up the drafting of our record for the future by forcing our special guests to slow down, breathe deeply, and think about the first eight months of the Obama administration -- that is the frame, although it is not the governing principle -- in a way that lifts up from the day-to-day scrum.

McCain, even having soured considerably on the establishment that he courted, was loved by, then was rejected by, then rejected, is still sounding the right themes from this crowd -- which very much likes the way the word bipartisanship sounds. When he noted that negotiation implied "concessions" from both sides, about half the main audience here nodded.

"There's something going on out there," McCain said a little while later. "I've been back in Arizona and 2000 people come to a town hall meeting. Many of them had never been before. The tea parties. But they're growing in America. And it's great dissatisfaction. It hasn't been channeled yet. It hasn't helped Republicans in the opinion polls. And it certainly hasn't helped the President. I think Americans are concerned about the debt and the deficit ...I think this could transfer into a new political era." The perception, he said, is one of "generational theft."

Neither party, he implied, spoke to these voters. Republicans were feckless and Democrats were incapable of responding to it. He does not blame Obama per se -- the bailouts of AIG and the banks, the abandonment of a larger federal program to aid homeowners, and the bonuses started during the previous administration.

Maybe after health care, McCain offered, "let's get together, sit down at the table, and have some real meaningful negotiations and discussions." The president, he said, "would like to have ... something before the Copenhagen meeting in December. Couldn't we agree on some things...maybe a piece of legislation...that would move us toward that direction?"
When Gregory asked McCain what he'd have done differently in terms of foreign policy, McCain answered without answering: "I'd love to answer that question and spend a couple of hours doing it." But, he said, elections have consequences, and to "nit pick" the president wouldn't be fair.

Looking back on the past eight months, he said of Obama, "I appreciate the fact that the President of the United States has given a new tone to countries around the world. He has given.. a lot of people in the world hope that the United States will be very helpful to them and form alliances. At the same time, I worry that we don't quite understand the nature of some of our adversaries." That was as far as he was willing to go.

To come back to the here and now, just briefly: McCain said that he believed that the Democrats would unilaterally pass health care reform without Republican votes. He said that if the administration refuses to send enough troops to Afghanistan, it should withdraw troops -- "and get out." McCain told the crowd to read Steve Coll's Ghost Wars. (He might not know that Obama has asked Coll for his advice on Afghanistan, quietly, privately.)



Looking back on Iraq, McCain said that the previous administration's war justifications hurt America's credibility. But Iran has no global credibility either, he said, -- the day that Neda was gunned down by Iranian irregulars in Tehran, he said, was the day that the Iranian regime began to end. America, he said, believes in both "Wilsonian principles and Realpolitik ... We stand up for human rights and for not being brutalized and taken into prison and beaten up..."

Oh, and which part of Sarah Palin's book is McCain most looking forward to reading?

"The part I'm looking to most is the part where it energized our campaign and put us ahead in the polls. The part I'm looking to least were some of the disagreements that took place within the campaign.... Her selection energized our party and that was the key element in putting us ahead in the polls. We were three points ahead on the morning of September 15. The stock market went down 700 points and we went down minus seven."

Watch the full video of this session: