Fancy Store-Bought Dirt

The interesting thing about McCain's party unity score is how it veered one way and then the other depending on how he positioned himself... in the first term, he was seriously considering switching parties and then running as John Kerry's running mate, and positioned himself opposed to Bush. After the 2004 election, as he started to prepare to succeed Bush while Bush was still (and is still) broadly popular with the base, he fell in line and began giving Bush his solid support. That's when he started advertising voting with Bush 90% of the time.

I wouldn't be surprised if McCain's party unity score over the time period Obama has been in the Senate ranked him higher than 6th-from-the-bottom among Republicans.

This does indicate that it is hard to tell what will motivate him if/once he's in office and doesn't have a narrow audience to target his policies toward.

MS: Well, that is one interpretation. Another, as the third Freakonomics commenter noted, is that it has been Bush and the rest of the party that has changed their views to be closer to McCain. Also, I wonder how, if at all, moving from the majority to the minority in the Senate has altered voting patterns for the Republicans.

I have not been paying close enough attention to know the true story.

Well, the thing is, it's not just data. We know McCain vocally opposed Bush's tax cuts in the first term, and now supports them. He was strongly opposed to torture because of his own experiences, and then he backed off a lot because he got pressure from his caucus and the conservative media. He opposed off-shore drilling and ANWR, now he reversed on the former and is in the process of reversing on the latter, if picking Palin means anything.

McCain was for the surge before Bush was, though, so that is a case of Bush and the Republican Party following his lead, it seems. Both Bush and McCain were once pro-immigration and amnesty and both shifted away from that, McCain to the extent of disowning his own bill, clearly in deference to the political reality and the fervor opposing his approach.

I'm not the kind of person to obsess over "flip-flops" because people change their minds for all sorts of reasons and there's nothing sacred about stubbornness. In this case, the changes in McCain's positions coincided with his political aspirations. It wasn't divined from a rough reading of data, it's what happened and is not considered remarkable. Democrats do it, too. This is one thing that makes me know he's not running for four more years of Bush; he clearly only embraced Bush's positions to win the nomination, and would move in his own direction as President. What that means could be debated.

OK...you convinced me.